


Millennial

by BrennaLynn



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Star Trek
Genre: F/F, Sibling Incest
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-08-12
Updated: 2016-03-14
Packaged: 2018-04-14 07:13:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 16
Words: 39,038
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4555506
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BrennaLynn/pseuds/BrennaLynn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Summary: Dawn was created exactly at 0:00:01 on January 1st, 2000 making her the Spirit of the 3rd Millenium. And on her 19th birthday Fate comes along and sets her on path that will span a thousand years with all the powers that comes with it. So as not live her life alone, she requests that Buffy be allowed to spend it with her.</p><p>A/U: Post Chosen</p><p>Pairing: Buffy/Dawn - Yes this is an incest pairing. If you don't like the pairing then my suggestions is to stop reading now. And please do not review stating you do not like the pairing. I have a zero tolerance policy when it comes to such reviews. </p><p>Disclaimer: Joss Whedon owns Buffy the Vampire Slayer. CBS and Paramount Studios owns Star Trek.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

Dawn Summers sat in the hotel room she was sharing with Buffy, twiddling her thumbs. Her sister was busy taking a shower which left her time to her thoughts. Buffy had promised to show her the world and so far she had managed it. They had seen Paris, Rome, Tokyo, London. Now they were in Madrid. Dawn couldn't be happier to be traveling with Buffy. She remembered back when Buffy had promised to show her the world. It had been one of the best times of her life, to hear the praise from Buffy. As she waited for Buffy to get out of the shower so they could go to dinner for Dawn's birthday, something shocked her.

One moment nothing was in the room except her. The next moment a man stood there. Dawn's first instinct was to yell for … "Buffy!"

"She cannot hear you," the man said. "For at this moment you and us are outside time. Or from our perspective time is frozen."

"You froze time?" Dawn asked as she backed toward the bathroom door. "Buffy, if you can hear me, get out here."

The man sighed. "Would it help you if she was here?"

"Yes," Dawn replied.

The man waved his arm. "Call for her."

"Buffy?" Dawn said.

"What is it?" came Buffy's voice from the bathroom.

"Put on a robe, please and come out here," Dawn replied. "There is a strange guy out here who can somehow supposedly freeze time."

A second later Buffy emerged from the bathroom, her hair still wet. She looked at the man and frowned. This was why she hated hotel rooms. Because vampires could come in. "How did he get in here?" she asked Dawn.

"By magic my dear," the man said. "We are Fate."

Dawn laughed. "Fate is a woman who houses the souls or spirits of three women."

"You are referring to the traditional guise of Fate," Fate said. "In reality there are many destinies and so there are many Fates. Though each Fate is like the one you mentioned, three souls inhabiting one body, sharing it equally. We personally weave the tapestries of your family."

"Not that I am saying I believe you," Buffy said as she tried to sense whether or not Fate was a demon. Her Slayer senses were not telling her anything about the man. "But if you weave the tapestries of life, why did you take our mother away?"

Fate's appearance shifted to that of an old man. "We do not arbitrarily determine when a life ends. But we do apologize for ending her life when it had. But think of this. Would you have preferred her to suffer or die as she did?"

"She died alone," Dawn said. "She should have had us with her."

"You are right of course," Fate said. "And we apologize again."

"So why are you here?" Buffy asked.

Fate shifted his form back to the first man, who they noticed was a young man, maybe not much older than they were. "Because of Dawn, and before either of you say anything. We are not here to warn you of her death. She will not for a very long time. We are to tell her she is a Millennial."

"A what?" Dawn and Buffy asked simultaneously.

"A Millennial, is someone usually born on January first of a millennium at exactly one second after midnight. Dawn was created on January first of the year two thousand exactly one second after midnight. She is a Millennial, she will live for the entire millennium. She is the Spirit of the Millennium."

"What does that mean," Buffy asked. "I get that she will live like a very long time, watching the rest of us grow and dye in front of her. But the rest …"

"She will feel Earth's woes and joys. The last Millennial was severely depressed in the Great Depression. And she felt deliriously happy during the Roaring twenties. She has the ability to transform into energy and travel through power lines and anything that uses such energy. She will also have the ability to use and control that same energy. I know comic books are not your thing, Buffy. But do you know the basics about Superman?"

"More or less," Buffy said.

"Dawn's body will be a giant battery, she can store the energy she takes in and release it later into a device or at any form of life in her defense her own or another's life."

"What if I don't want this responsibility?" Dawn asked.

"I am afraid it is too late to back out," Fate said. "The moment you were created it was too late to back out. You are the Spirit of the Millennium."

"I don't want to live that kind of life alone, can …"

"We have already anticipated that request," Fate said as it looked at Buffy. "Your life, Buffy, is tied to your sister's. You will live as long as she. The last day of the millennium when she dies, you shall as well."


	2. The Bombs Shall Fall

**_April 2063_ **

Dawn sat at the table she shared with Zefram and Buffy. It had been almost sixty years since Fate had come and told her that she was the Spirit of the Millennium. Fate had been right about the events in the world taking their toll on Dawn’s emotions. During the Third World War, she had not been in the best of places, and Buffy had to carefully tiptoe around her sister during that time. But the war had been over about ten years and Dawn had finally found the anger she had felt dissipate when peace had settled across the world from what governments were left.

Buffy watched and Dawn watched Zefram and sighed. The man had ten shots and had begun to slur his speech. The man was a genius, having built a vessel that could travel to the stars. But he rarely ever seemed to stay sober, despite their attempts to keep him that way long enough to finish the Phoenix.

They pulled him off his barstool and out of the tattered olive-drab tent, that was the Crash and Burn, tent into the freezing night. They paused at the door and took in a breath of fresh air.

“Lily, Willow c’mon,” Zefram pleaded.

With the fact neither sister aged, they had changed their names just before the war so as not to draw suspicion to themselves. Both of the sisters had watched over the last sixty years the friends die. First Giles, simply old age, then Xander during the war and finally Willow from a disease that had been curable before the war and afterwards was deadly because of the lack of medical supplies.

“We’re celebrating, remember?” he asked.

“We can celebrate when it’s over,” Buffy said curtly as she and Dawn made their way cautiously around the larger mud puddles, which were capped by a layer of frosted ice. Zefram followed alongside, arms out, pleading.

“Lily ... Willow …”

“You’re going to regret this,” Dawn said neither she nor Buffy stopped as they walked faster.

Zefram tried to keep up with them, but between the booze and the icy patches, he caught the edge of a mud puddle with his heel and almost slipped.

Buffy and Dawn glanced at each other as they slowed and grabbed him around the waist.

He grinned. “If there’s one thing you two should’ve learned about me by now, it’s that I have no regrets.”

Dawn rolled her eyes as she glanced at her sister.

Zefram stopped suddenly and gave them both a conspiratorial wink. “Come on, Lily, Willow. One more round.” He moved to turn back, but Buffy and Dawn forged straight ahead, jaw set.

“You’ve had enough,” Dawn told him. “I’m not riding in the Phoenix tomorrow with a drunken pilot.” Her gaze grew unfocused—but not enough to miss a fantastically swift-moving disc of light amid the stars, one that seemed to grow nearer as she watched.

“Buffy,” she whispered low enough so Zefram would not hear, but loud enough that Buffy could pick up her sister’s voice with her Slayer hearing. Buffy followed her gaze. “What is that?”

Zaefram noticed Buffy and Dawn were looking upwards and he too glanced up, squinting hard to keep from seeing double. “That, my dears, is the Constellation Leo.”

“No, that,” Dawn insisted, pointing. She tried to calm herself,

Then Zefram lifted his face toward the sky and finally saw it. His faint, inebriated grin vanished; his face hardened, then slackened into a disbelieving, stunned expression. The sight had instantly sobered him, and as Buffy and Dawn glanced at whatever it was, they saw saw two bright streaks emerge from the shining disc—and a half-second later, heard the distant thunder.

Buffy and Dawn reacted instinctively and pulling Zefram they dove out of the way toward a small berm at the path’s edge as the beams hit the ground leaving behing a great smoking crater—all that remained of several nearby Quonset huts and tents. They stayed where they were as more streaks of light rained down from the heavens.

In a fleeting millisecond of quiet, Zefram sighed beside the sisters. “After all these years . . .” He rolled his eyes skyward.

“You think it’s the ECON?” Dawn asked.

“They couldn"t have waited another day. . . ?” Zefram said, his expression one of irony and defeat.

Abruptly, he jerked to his feet and pulled Buffy and Dawn with him, then ran, dragging them into the exposed street.

Toward the Crash & Burn.

Dawn and Buffy pulled free. “We’ve gotta get to the Phoenix!” Dawn said. The missile silo would offer some protection down away from the surface levels. But they would have to worry about radiation. While radiation could not kill them, they could still wind up sick for a while. But it would be better to be sick than to be obliterated. They did not want to risk that one of those beams could erase all traces of them, especially after the fact that the several Quonset hut and tents that had been in that crater, had been wiped off the face of the earth along with their occupants.

Dawn and Buffy ran toward the silo at top speed, without a glance back at him.

The blasts had stopped by the time they made it to the stairs leading down to the silo. The entire area surrounding it was gouged with smoking craters that smelled of ozone.

They walked through the slowly opening door, and at the sight of what lay within the outer control room and sighed. “Oh, goddess,” Dawn whispered. They made their way through the control room and Buffy held whispering comforting words.

In the sixty years Buffy had come to realize feelings for Dawn. Feelings she could trace back to one moment, the moment she told Dawn that she had wanted to watch Dawn grow up into the beautiful woman she would become. And Dawn had done just that. And they had grown closer because of it, because of what Fate had done to her, to keep her by Dawn’s side. She thought back on what Fate had told her privately.

_“You will be there for Dawn in ways that neither of you had ever believed. What society has taught you as wrong. Know this everything will lead up to what you and Dawn will become. You are the only person now able to give to her.”_

_“What?” Buffy had wanted to know._

_“Love.”_

Had fate been right back then, Buffy wondered. Had been only a matter of time before she would fall in love with her own sister?

They passed the dead by, they would grieve later for these three as like with Willow, Xander and Giles they had gotten to know. They continued out into the corridor that led toward the missile chamber itself was less damaged and thus more easily navigable. Dawn was first to the lead blast door, which was still sealed. Dawn looked to her sister who nodded and stepped forward. And as Buffy pulled; the great leaden door rumbled as it slid slowly over the smooth concrete floor.

When it was open they stepped over the threshold onto the highest catwalk, the one that led to the ship’s cockpit in the vast chamber’s heart. Beneath, two more floors of metal scaffolding led to the engineering and reactor levels on the Phoenix. The ground level was scattered with Zefram’s tools and equipment, partially buried beneath chunks of fallen ceiling; all, including the catwalks, were sprinkled with rubble and the same pulverized concrete dust that had coated the control room.

“Well it looks like we may have some work ahead of us,” Buffy said as she looked at the damage the attack had done. “First we really need to make sure there is no radiation, while we can’t die, I certainly don’t want to be six for the next several weeks either while our bodies recuperate.”

“Agreed,” Dawn said as she smiled at Buffy. She remembered when her sister had never been much of a science person. But over the sixty years since Fate had come to tell them she herself was a Millennial. Buffy had gotten her degree and then shortly before the war had gotten a second. Sure Buffy was not a science whiz, but she knew her way around the Phoenix.

They heard boots ringing against metal grating. If this had been the old Dawn and Buffy, Buffy would have made Dawn hide while she took care of what was coming. Dawn placed a hand on the side of the Phoenix and siphoned some of its electrical energy and channeled it into her body. And they waited.

They watched as the blast door rumbled open. They spotted a bald older man and a pale, jaundiced looking man .

“Stop where you are,” Dawn said as the two men looked at her and Buffy as if they might be crazy.

“Greetings,” the pale man said. He began to walk toward them.

Dawn prepared to fire off a blast of electrical energy when she felt suddenly dizzy. The silo dimmed abruptly, and she tripped, then fell forward into the pale man’s arms. As she lost consciousness she noticed that Buffy was held in the bald man’s arms.


	3. Awakening

Jean Luc Picard, Captain of the U.S.S. Enterprise NCC-1701-E called for Beverly Crusher his Chief Medical Officer, who came running. Beverly wasted not a second’s time hurrying to Picard and Data, the pale man, across the scaffolding to the place where Buffy and Dawn lay unconscious. Beverly knelt down over her patients, and produced a medical tricorder. The women had no visible injuries, but Picard noted the subtle change in Beverly’s intense expression as she checked the scanner’s readout. She glanced up at Picard, her tone somber.

“Severe theta-radiation poisoning.”

“The radiation is coming from the damaged throttle assembly,” Data said; he had been scanning the ship with his tricorder.

Beverly’s blue eyes narrowed and squared her shoulders. “We’re all going to have to be inoculated. . . and I need to get them”—she nodded at Buffy and Dawn— “to sickbay.”

Picard could not repress an immediate scowl. He opened his mouth to begin a stern speech, one that Beverly ought to have memorized by now, but she stopped him with a look.

“Jean-Luc, no lectures about the Prime Directive. I’ll keep them unconscious.”

He sighed. “Very well. Tell Commander Riker to beam down with a search party. We need to find Cochrane.”

“Right,” Beverly said, and pressed her comm badge. “Crusher to Enterprise. Three to beam directly to sickbay.”

0 – 0 – 0 – 0 – 0

Dr. Beverly Crusher drew a damp hand across her forehead, trying to smooth back the sweat-darkened strawberry-blond strands that clung there.

“Dr. Crusher,” Alyssa Ogawa called. Beverly turned and walked over to Alyssa. “You should see this.”

Beverly looked at the monitor and frowned, that was not possible. “Their cells are regenerating at remarkable rate.”

“Yes,” the nurse said. “On top of that.” She switched the view to show the radiation contamination.”

Beverly’s frown deepened. That was even more impossible. The radiation levels were already dropping. Though she could tell that without her help the levels would leave the women sick if she did nothing, but she could tell that the radiation was no longer life threatening. How does someone fight off radiation poisoning, she had to wonder.

“And doctor, unless they both had some form of radical plastic surgery,” the nurse said. “They look good for being well over sixty years old.”

“Over sixty?” Beverly asked shocked.

“According to tests done on their skin. The blonde shows to be in her eighties, and the brunette in her seventies.”

Beverly walked over to the women, the younger one in particular and paused to study her face. Everything she had just learned was remarkable. If not for the Prime Directive, she wished she could take them back with her. She could learn so much from them.

Crusher ran the back of her hand over the brunette’s face and sighed, then glanced up at Alyssa. “Let’s run a few more tests,” she said. “One more on their skin, one on their cell membranes and some tests on their spinal tissues. I want to know how their able to do what they can do. I’m going to give them something to help fight off the sickness itself. ” She fanned herself with a hand. “And would you find out why it’s so hot in here?”

Alyssa never got a chance to reply; the words were not quite out of Crusher"s mouth when every light in the room flickered, then went dark—including every active monitor.

“Now what?” Alyssa said bitterly.

Beverly tapped her comm badge. “Crusher to engineering.”

Her tone rose slightly as she said, “Crusher to bridge.”

Static.

She drew in a breath, unsettled. Losing power on the decks was not necessarily an indication that something ominous was occurring, but a power failure should have absolutely no effect on communications. For them both to go out at the same instant was simply too much of a coincidence for comfort.

Alyssa started and looked up at the walls; Beverly followed her gaze, hearing the noise, too: an eerie skittering movement inside the bulkheads themselves. Another skitter above, in the ceiling. She glanced up, unable to suppress a shudder of surprise, then caught Alyssa’s gaze; the two of them stared wide-eyed at each other in silent recognition of the other’s fear.

Something was outside ... and trying to get in.

0 – 0 – 0 – 0 – 0

Sweet, soothing darkness, from which Dawn was reluctant to rise; the first true rest since the war. She so enjoyed resting like this, being a Millennial could be hard on her at times, such as during the war. She had felt nothing but anger for a decade.

Voices, murmuring, fragmented, at times indistinct intruder on her sleep.

“. . . got to take them; can’t worry about the damned Prime Directive.”

“They’re the ones changing history. If we let them die, how do we know. . .“

“. . . get them up.”

“. . . take them. Go, go, move—”

Strange noises: the sound of rapidly moving metal against metal, like a hundred mechanical mice scurrying inside a wall.

“Coming. They’re almost here ...”

“Wake up!”

“Let’s go. C’mon, move it!”

“Wake up!” a feminine voice demanded, and Dawn grudgingly fluttered her eyelids to see a woman with red-gold hair staring down at her. “Come on, wake up!”

“Where ... what?” Dawn blinked and lifted her head; as her dimly lit surrounding came into sharp focus, she could better see the woman’s expression: wide-eyed, urgent, determined. And that was when her Millennial sense kicked in and she suddenly felt fear. These people were afraid of something.

“There’s no time to explain,” the woman told Dawn. “I need you to sit up.”

“Bu … Willow?” Dawn asked correcting herself.

“Is that your friend?” the woman asked.

“Sister,” Dawn replied. She pushed herself up and got off the bed; she looked around and spotted Buffy getting off another bed and smiled. As both she and Buffy looked around, they noticed something. Everything was astonishingly different, in fact definitely more advanced than anything they had seen.

Dawn and Buffy were rushed toward a hole in the wall as they noticed all of the people around them wearing the same black-and-gray jumpsuit.

They passed by another woman, a plumper, dark- haired one who was pointing a little black instrument at a door. She, too, wore the black uniform.

“Alyssa!” The strawberry blonde said. “Take them and go!”

At once, Alyssa grabbed Buffy and Dawn’s arms with no-nonsense firmness and began to steer them toward the people crawling into the wall tunnel.

“Those doors won’t hold much longer,” Alyssa shouted over her shoulder. “They’re going to be right behind us!”

The woman lingered, casting a worried glance at the door, then her surroundings. “We need a diversion. Is the EMH still online?”

Alyssa glanced at a console. “It should be. The holobuffers are still functioning.”

The woman quirked her lip in disgust, but her worried gaze remained on the door, which had begun to creak as if something was pushing against it. “God, I hate those things.” As she spoke, the door let out a screech and began to buckle inward; she wasted no more time, but looked upward and said, “Computer—activate the EMH program.”

At that precise instant, it was Dawn and Buffy’s turn to enter the crowded tunnel; Alyssa gestured for them to hurry along, but they lingered—and watched as, out of thin air, a man appeared. “Please state the nature of the medical emergency,” he said.

“Twenty Borg are about to break down that door, and we need time to get out of here,” the woman shouted in one urgent breath. “Create a diversion!” And she began to run toward Alyssa and toward Buffy and Dawn, who had crawled into the tube but listened to the conversation behind them.

The man’s tone grew irritated. “This isn’t part of my program. I’m a doctor, not a doorstop.”

By then, the woman had climbed into the tunnel, and as she prepared to pull down the hatch, she called back with equal irritation, “Dance for them; tell them a story—I don’t care. Just give us a few extra seconds!”

With a loud clank, the hatch shut. Buffy and Dawn waited for both women to crawl past them before at last following the others.

“Are they ECON?” Dawn whispered to her sister.

“I don’t know,” Buffy whispered back. “But I know this; we should be suffering from radiation sickness for at least a while still. And I feel no ill effects from the radiation.”

“I don’t either,” Dawn replied.

“Does your Millennial sense tell you anything?” Buffy asked.

“I’m feeling lots of fear. But I’m also feeling there is something I need to be doing and it’s not with these people.”

“Alright,” Buffy said.

When the group ahead of them was out of sight, they struck off in another direction.

0 – 0 – 0 – 0 – 0

The tunnel was dark, overheated, close, but desperation and adrenaline spurred Jean Luc Picard until he crawled at phenomenal speed, gasping from the heat and exertion. Only one thing could be worse than encountering the Borg on his own ship’s engineering deck—and that would be to encounter them here, in a claustrophobic Jefferies tube. Certainly, if they were in here, his gasps would give away his location.

Yet he could not bring himself to really slow down—only enough to glance over his shoulder from time to time at the unrevealing darkness behind him.

At last he neared the first intersection, and he forced both breath and pace to ease before he dared take the turn that led eventually to an access ladder and deck fifteen. It was only then that he permitted himself to think of Data and the obscene existence that awaited his friend. The thought provoked a shudder; with Data’s already-incredible strength and brilliant android brain added to the collective, the Borg might become truly undefeatable....

A sharp pain across the skin of his throat made him gasp, pulled him backward; he tried to draw in a breath and could not. He dropped his phaser and clawed briefly at the cable strangling him—then wedged his boots against the tube wall and slammed with all his strength backward, away from the pressure.

A body behind him—smaller than expected—groaned as he smashed it back against the opposite wall.

The cable loosened at once; he took advantage of his position and plunged an elbow backward.

To his astonishment, he felt nothing but ribs and soft flesh.

As his attacker emitted a high-pitched yelp, he whirled about.

And in the dimness saw two sweat-slicked faces: the women from the missile silo. He noticed that the brunette had picked up his phaser and that it had been the blonde that had been the one to attack him.

“You two,” Picard whispered, moving toward them. “How did you—”

“Back off!” Dawn said; the phaser in her grasp remained steady. “Where are we? Why were we brought here?”

“My name is Jean—”

“You’re not with the Eastern Coalition are you?” Buffy asked.

“No, I’m not part of the Eastern Coalition,” he answered. “Look, this is difficult to explain, but—”

“Back to my original questions,” Dawn said. “Where are we, why have you brought us here?”

“On the second question, you had radiation poisoning,” Picard said. “We brought you here to treat you.”

“We didn’t need your treatment, but thanks all the same,” Dawn replied.

“And where you are, well that’s not going to be easy to explain.”

“You might want to consider trying so we know what it is I’m meant to do here.”

“You’re meant to do?” Picard asked confused.

“Never mind,” Buffy said with a glance at Dawn. “Just show us where we are.”

“Alright,” he said, and brushed himself off, then rose to a crouched position and began moving again. “Follow me.”


	4. A New Reality

They had crawled from one of the cramped tunnels out into one more brightly lit that permitted Buffy and Dawn the luxury of standing. Picard crouched down and reached for a hatch cover and lifted it the merest slit, revealing on the level beneath them endless rows of the silent, standing cyborg men, each sporting the same white face with nondescript features, each clothed in black metal armor that seemed part of their very flesh.

As he slowly, soundlessly replaced the hatch, a muscle in his jaw twitched; with grim revulsion, he glanced up and said softly, “They’re on this deck, too. We have to keep moving.”

“Look,” Dawn said. “I don’t know how to use this thing. And I can feel the fear of everyone wherever it is we are.”

“Are you a Betazoid?” he asked confused.

“I don’t know what that is,” Dawn said. “But I don’t want to try firing this thing at them and hitting the wrong button and you getting killed.”

Picard accepted the phaser and nodded. “This way,” he said as he headed off down the tunnel. “What happened in sickbay? Where’s Dr. Crusher and the others?” Despite his effort to suppress it, his eyes and voice betrayed deep concern.

“We got separated,” Buffy said. “I guess more of whatever those things are were trying to break down the door. We were ushered into one of the tunnels in the wall.”

Picard nodded as he reached where he was going. He pressed a panel on the wall and a hatch opened onto a large chamber, and he strode inside.

The room was empty save for groupings of couches and chairs facing the oddly bare far wall, which sloped outward at a forty-five degree angle.

Picard moved quickly toward it, he said, “There’s a ... new faction that wants to prevent your launch tomorrow morning. But we’re here to help you.” He stopped in front of what looked to be a panel of push button controls built into the side wall. “This may be difficult to accept,” he said, “but you’re not on Earth anymore. You’re in a spaceship, orbiting at an altitude of about two hundred and fifty kilometers.”

Buffy and Dawn looked at each other and then back at Picard who pressed the control and they watched as the great curving wall slid aside to reveal a profoundly startling vision.

Naked space and stars, and beneath them, vast and blue and shining, Earth.

“I beginning to understand,” Dawn whispered to Buffy. “I was drawn to him for a reason.” She looked at Picard. “Force field?” she asked startling him.

“Yes,” Picard said.

“Seen enough TV shows before the war that I know what a force field is,” she said as she and Buffy stepped toward the force field. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything so beautiful before.”

“Jean-Luc Picard,” he offered warmly. “My name. What are yours?”

“Lily,” Dawn said, “Lily Summers and this is my sister, Willow.”

“Welcome aboard, Lily, Willow,” he said. “Come on, there’s more I need to tell you…”

Picard led them down a tunnel as he explained exactly what was going on. He opened a hatch and jumped down to the next level as they followed and then moved cautiously down the hallway.

“Cybernetic lifeforms,” Buffy said with a shake of her head. She looked at Dawn. “And here I thought my days of fighting the forces of evil were gone.”

Picard looked to Buffy and wondered by what she meant the forces of evil. He assumed she meant the war. Still the statement was a curious one. Once they were out of this and before he and his crew returned to their time, he might ask them.

He paused in their journey to consult a computerized panel on the ... bulkhead.

“The encryption still in place?” Dawn asked.

“Yes,” Picard replied.

“So how many planets are in this ... Federation?” Buffy wondered. The future he had described to them that they might one day get to live sounded nice.

“Over one hundred and fifty,” he said. “Spread across eight thousand light-years.”

“Not even a quarter of the galaxy,” Dawn said. “You must not get back to Earth very often.”

“I do try to get back when I can.”

“How big is this ship?” Dawn asked, gazing around her. It seemed they’d covered miles of empty corridors.

“Twenty-four decks. Almost seven hundred meters long,” Jean-Luc answered, with obvious pride.

“It took Dawn and I six months to scrounge up enough titanium to build the Phoenix’s cockpit,” Buffy said. “You must have some good sources for the metal.”

“We do,” Picard answered. “We have mines throughout the Federation that supply the various shipyards.”

As they rounded a corner they found it lined with a dozen hibernating Borg inside narrow alcoves, and several Borg were moving about, apparently working.

Buffy and Dawn watched as Jean-Luc headed for the Borg. “It’s all right,” he said in a low, calm voice. “They won’t attack us unless we threaten them.”

He led them into the enemy’s midst as the Borg moved past them. As they passed by one hibernating Borg, it suddenly bolted forward from its alcove and moved past them, silently summoned to do some task. T

Jean-Luc grabbed Buffy and Dawn and pulled them out of the way of a Borg who would have walked blindly into them.

When they were moving again, an odd expression passed over his face. As Dawn watched she was sure he was hearing something that she could not hear. “You hear them don’t you?” she asked. How Dawn knew that she was not sure.

Picard simply nodded. A moment later they stepped from the Borg corridor into what Buffy and Dawn recognized as Federation surroundings. He peered down an adjacent corridor, his mind clearly seized by a fresh idea. As Picard raised his phaser Dawn grabbed his arm.

“Let me show you something,” Dawn said and Picard looked at her for a second. “What were you going to aim at?”

“The equipment at the end of the corridor,” he said.

Dawn reached out and touched the bulkhead and held out her other arm at the same time and fired a blast of electrical energy at the equipment that Picard had indicated.

The equipment exploded in a rain of sparks.

Behind them, two Borg simultaneously turned about and began to pursue them.

“How did you do that?” He asked as he led the two of them down a corridor to a set of double doors, he hit a control, and then motioned them inside.

As Buffy and Dawn passed him Dawn said, “It’s a long complicated story. Maybe I will tell it to you someday.”

The doors slid shut with a silent whoosh.

Picard stepped up to a small, glowing control panel and began to tap it with his fingers.

From the other side of the door came a slithering scrape: the Borg.

With maddening calm, he fixed his gaze upon Buffy and Dawn and looked her frankly up and down, still fingering the panel.

“Perhaps something in satin.”

The door rumbled, then began to screech.

Within seconds, they would be inside.

In the snap of a finger, the world around them changed. No more dark, empty room. Instead, they found themselves immediately transported to another place, another time—a nightclub, in the early twentieth century, judging from the clothing. Another man appeared beside Buffy.

“It’ll look less suspicious if we both have dates,” he said to Buffy.

Buffy nodded in understanding. Once the Borg got in they would have a hard time identifying the three of them in here. Without a date she would stand out. And the Borg might zero in on her.

The room was impossibly larger and filled with a smoky haze. An old-fashioned band was packing up for the night, while busboys cleared tables to the tinkle of ice against glass. Dawn and Buffy noticed it was not only the world had changed or the addition of the new man. But themselves and Picard had changed. Both Buffy and Dawn now wore long white satin dresses. And Picard himself wore a striped suit with a broad, necktie, and a banded fedora at a rakish angle.

Picard seized Dawn’s arm and propelled her through the nearly empty, smoke-veiled room toward the main bar.

Buffy grabbed the man’s arm and they followed after her sister and Picard.

The bar was an ornate creation of gleaming mahogany and brass trim, adorned by Tiffany lamps, golden swans, and cherubs; behind it on the wall hung a large Maxfield Parrish print of a gossamer-clad woman on a swing.

“Eddie!” Picard called to the bartender.

The man glanced up from the glass he was drying and grinned. “Dixon!”

“Dixon, Dixon,” Dawn muttered to herself. She had heard the name before, back before the war. “Dixon Hill?” she asked Picard as she realized where she had heard the name, a mystery novel.

Picard nodded without responding.

Behind them, the holodeck doors gave a final terrifying shriek as the two Borg pushed them apart and stepped inside ... then hesitated, perplexed by the unexpected scene.

A tuxedoed maître d’ at once approached the drones and said: “I"m sorry, gentlemen. But we’re closing.”

The Borg made no move to leave. Annoyed, the maître d’ continued firmly. “And you do understand we have a strict dress code. So if you boys don’t leave right now, I’ll—”

One Borg seized the unfortunate host’s collar and dragged him close; a small black scope covering one of the drone’s eyes began to flash, then extended outward and focused a thin laser beam on the face of the maître d’.

“Long time no see, Dix! What’ll it be—the usual?” the bartender asked.

Picard glanced surreptitiously up and down the bar. “I’m looking for Nicky the Nose.”

“The Nose?” The bartender frowned and ceased his relentless polishing. “He ain’t been in here for months.”

Picard briefly closed his eyes and let go a breath in a moment of disgusted revelation. “This is the wrong chapter,” he said. He lifted his face slightly, as if speaking to someone hovering overhead. “Computer: begin chapter thirteen.”

Dawn and Buffy blinked, a single, swift fluttering of the lashes, and after that briefest of instants, saw that the bar was still the same, but the dance floor was filled with people swaying to the band’s music.

Waiters sailed through the room with trays of food and drink, and all the empty space surrounding them was now crammed with warm bodies.

And the Borg had just entered the ballroom.

Picard took Dawn’s hand and drew her into the middle of the packed ballroom, then began to dance. “Try to look like you’re having a good time,” he admonished her.

The Borg started to make their way through the crowd.

“You look like your enjoying yourself,” Dawn said when she noticed his smile.

“If it wasn’t for the situation, I would say you are right,” Picard said and then he noticed something and frowned. “What is she doing?”

Dawn stopped dancing and turned and saw Buffy walking toward the Borg.

“Computer,” Buffy said. “I need a scythe.” When the computer asked for the kind she gave a very detailed description of the Slayer’s Scythe.

The red and gold scythe she was so familiar with appeared in her hands. She twirled it experimentally and wished this was the real thing. She knew where the real scythe was, buried in the ruins of the rebuilt Watcher’s Council.

The Borg suddenly broke through the crowd and headed toward her. Instinctively, Buffy did as she had done so many times before. She lunged at the nearest Borg. The Borg reached out to stop and found it quickly without an arm and then it’s head. The second Borg lunged at Buffy and found itself falling backward with a shot of electrical energy.

Buffy glanced over her shoulder and saw Dawn with her hand on Picard and the other outstretched knew that her sister had drawn off some of Picard’s energy and fired a blast. She turned back to the Borg and before it could get up, she cleaved it’s head off as well.

Picard and Dawn came up to Buffy and Picard looked at the both of them for a moment with shock. “How?” he asked again.

“If you don’t already know,” Buffy said. “We can’t tell you.”

Picard reluctantly nodded as he gazed down at the Borg with loathing. He knelt down next to one of the Borg, the one Dawn had fired at. Her energy blast had somehow not only overcome the Borg shields but had torn open it’s chest, leaving behind a horizontal swath of shredded black metal and pale flesh tinged with blood. Without a word, Picard opened a panel on one Borg’s abdomen.

“I don’t get it,” Dawn said. “The scythe is not real …”

“I disengaged the safety protocols,” Picard answered, his tone curt, distant. “Without them, even a holographic weapon can kill.” He glanced up at Buffy. “The question is how did you know that?”

“I didn’t,” Buffy said. “It was a guess. I figured if holograms could be made solid so could a weapon. And if the weapon was solid that meant it could hurt someone. I was fairly certain you had lured them in for a reason.”

“Yes, to do exactly what you did, so I could get this,” Picard said as he pulled out what looked like a computer chip. “It’s the neuroprocessor. Every Borg has one. It’s like a memory chip; it’ll contain a record of the instructions this Borg’s been receiving from the collective.”

“Buffy,” Dawn said as she saw the ragged remnants of a Starfleet uniform.

“I know,” Buffy said. “Their part of Jean-Luc’s crew. But I had no choice, it was us or them.” She looked at Picard. “They could be considered no longer human.”

“Yes,” Picard said.

Sometime later inside another one of the tunnels between the walls, Picard steeled himself and reached overhead to pull the lever that would open the hatch. Above lay the Enterprise bridge, which, according to the computer panel he had consulted, was environmentally prepared for the Borg. The chance existed that they had already arrived there and now waited on the other side of the hatch.

Inhaling deeply, he pulled the lever. The hatch slowly slid open. He braced himself for the sight of a chalk-pale hand reaching for him, Buffy and Dawn. Instead, he found himself looking up at the business end of three phaser rifles, Starfleet issue, and the grim faces of Worf, Beverly, and Lieutenant Hawk.

“Captain,” Worf said, not quite smiling with relief. Beside him, Crusher"s and Hawk"s tension visibly deflated. The three lowered their weapons while the Klingon proffered the captain a large, dark hand.

Picard took it and stepped up onto a bridge dim and overheated, but blessedly un-Borgified; most of the consoles had been opened up, and officers labored to bring them online.

“Jean-Luc,” Beverly said, dark emotions clearly warring with light. She could not quite bring herself to smile. “We thought you were—”

Picard interrupted. “Reports of my assimilation have been greatly exaggerated.” He moved away from the Jefferies tube as Worf pulled first Dawn and then Buffy up onto the bridge.

Buffy looked at Worf and remembering when this ship had come from. This man, for lack of a better term, she reasoned was someone from another planet, not a demon.

“I found something you lost. This is Lily Summers and her sister Willow. Dr. Crusher”—Picard gestured at each of his officers in turn —”Lieutenant Hawk … and Mr. Worf.”

“What are you?” Dawn asked with a glance at Buffy.

“I am Klingon,” Worf offered.

“Cool,” Dawn said, nodding.

Picard wasted no more time, but turned to Worf and demanded, “Report.”

“The Borg control over half the ship. We’ve been trying to restore power to the bridge and the weapons systems, but we have been unsuccessful.”

Crusher joined in. “So far, there are sixty-seven people missing ... including Data.”

Dawn could feel a surge of rage and sorrow and she was sure it came from Picard. She laid a hand gently on his arm and for a moment Picard glanced at her and then slowly nodded. He turned back to Worf, Beverly and Hawk. “We have to assume they’ve been assimilated. Unfortunately, we have a bigger problem. I accessed a Borg neuroprocessor ... and I think I’ve discovered what they’re trying to do. They’re transforming the deflector dish into an interplexing beacon.”

Hawk frowned, puzzled. “Interplexing beacon?”

Picard paused, choosing his words carefully; the term was, of course, perfectly and mysteriously clear to him—just as the knowledge of the neuroprocessor had been. “A kind of subspace transmitter. It links all the Borg together to form a single consciousness. If the Borg on this ship activate the beacon, they’ll establish a link with the other Borg in this century.”

“But in the twenty-first century, the Borg are still in the Delta Quadrant,” Beverly said.

“They’ll send reinforcements,” Picard continued grimly. “Humanity would be an easy target. Attack Earth in the past ... to assimilate the future.” Out of the corner of his eyes he noticed that Buffy and Dawn looked at each other.

“We must destroy the deflector dish before they activate the beacon,” Worf stated, coming to precisely the conclusion his captain had intended.

“We can’t get to a shuttlecraft,” Picard said, thinking over the possibilities. “And it would take too long to fight our way down to deflector control.. .“ He paused, reaching; defeat was not an option. Happily, the idea came. “Mr. Worf ...” He looked up brightly at the Klingon. “Do you remember your zero-g combat training?”

Worf swallowed hard, as if trying to keep the unpleasant memory down. “I remember it made me sick to my stomach. What are you suggesting?”

Picard turned to the Klingon with a knowing look. “I think it’s time we went for a little stroll.”

Thirty minutes later inside an Enterprise airlock, Picard secured the helmet to his spacesuit, then took the phaser rifle Worf proffered.

“I have remodulated the pulse emitters,” the Klingon said, as he handed Lieutenant Hawk a weapon. “But I do not believe we will get more than one or two shots before the Borg adapt.”

“Then we’ll just have to make those shots count,” Picard answered simply.

“Are you sure you don’t want me out there, you saw what I can do,” Dawn said.

“Better not to risk it,” Picard answered. “We don’t know if you might breach the suit firing off a burst of energy.”

Dawn nodded and leaned in to Picard. “Good luck,” she said as she kissed him on the cheek.

Picard turned and addressed both the Klingon and Lieutenant Hawk. “Magnetize.”

He touched the small control pad on the thigh of his suit; the two others did the same.

Immediately, the light on his boots began to blink green, and the soles hugged the deck with a metallic thunk. He looked at his two officers, their faces entirely visible beneath the face shields; Worf’s expression was one of eagerness, Hawk’s one of nervous determination.

“Ready?”

The officers nodded; Picard moved to a wall panel and activated the control. At once, the airlock door opened. Impulsively, he turned back toward Dawn. “Watch your caboose, Dix,” she said.

“I intend to,” Picard said most sincerely, and led the others into the airlock.

As the airlock closed Dawn turned and exited the room as she headed back toward the bridge. When she reached the bridge she nodded to Beverly. “Their outside,” she said.

Beverly nodded and returned her attention to the console.

“Is there some place Willow and I can talk in private?”

Beverly motioned toward a door and Buffy and Dawn walked through it. If they had not already come to terms with the fact they were in space, what they saw now would have made them believers. They looked out the observation window over the back of the starship.

“You wanted to talk to me,” Buffy said as she turned toward her sister.

“I … I don’t know if I am feeling someone else’s feelings, But I’ve noticed since we’ve been aboard that I’ve felt love towards you,” Dawn replied.

“You mean romantic love?”

“Yes.”

Buffy nodded as she again thought back on what Fate had told her. “I’m going to tell you something that Fate told me in private. Since we are the only two that will live for a thousand years and since you requested me. The love we feel as sisters he said would likely grow into more.”

“I can see that,” Dawn said. “For we are the only two that might live as long as we do. But still being in love with you, Buffy, it’s like … It’s supposed to be wrong.”

“I know,” Buffy said.


	5. The Angry Captain

Dawn and Buffy stood behind Beverly as she worked the controls to open the airlock and let Picard and Worf in. As they stepped through Dawn and Picard shared a look for a moment and then he turned his attention to Beverly and shared with the doctor a relieved smile as he removed his helmet.

“We stopped them,” he said, his tone a mixture of triumph and regret. “But we lost Hawk.”

Dawn could feel the loss of Hawk flowing from Picard and smiled as she patted his arm.

Picard looked at Dawn in appreciation at the comforting gesture.

Beverly moved forward to help Worf, who fumbled in his efforts to remove his helmet. On tiptoe, she reached up and lifted the helmet in a single, graceful move.

Beneath, Worf’s dark face had faded to gray and his eyes had narrowed to slits; the corners of his mouth tugged downward in a manner that made Picard instinctively back away.

Dawn noticed it also as she tapped Buffy on the arm and motioned for her sister to take a few steps back.

“Commander.” Beverly addressed the paling Klingon. “Are you feeling all—”

Worf held up a large hand. “Hold that thought.” He lunged behind the nearest console and began to retch; at the sounds of his gagging, the four shared a look of nauseated pity.

“Strong heart,” Picard said. “Weak stomach.”

“They’re on the move again!”

The comment from a fourth voice made them whirl about as, a mere meter away; a security officer crawled from a Jefferies tube. The young man’s olive face and disheveled coal-black hair glistened with perspiration; wide-eyed and shaken, he told Picard, “The Borg just overran three of our defense checkpoints; they’ve taken decks five and six. They’ve adapted to every modulation of our weapons. It’s like we’re shooting blanks.”

“We’ll have to start working on a new way to modify our phasers so they’re more effective,” Picard told him at once.

Dawn understood the problem at once. Picard had told her and Buffy that the Borg had shields and that they could adapt. Her Millennial power had so far been the only thing the Borg had yet to adapt to. She had to wonder if the reason for that was because her Millennial power was more biological or even magical, than technological and the Borg being a species that was half man, half machine did not know how to adapt to something that was not technological.

Picard glanced sternly at the young officer. “In the meantime, tell your people to stand their ground. Fight hand to hand, if they have to.”

The officer’s posture and expression visibly deflated; for an instant, he averted his gaze and seemed to stare sadly beyond Picard at a vision of his own death. Then a sense of duty seized the young man, gathered him, straightened him, caused him to nod smartly at Picard.

“Aye, sir.” He turned to go.

“Wait” Worf had emerged from behind the console and now stood, one hand gripping it to steady himself, the other wiping his mouth. “Captain ... our weapons are useless. We must activate the autodestruct sequence and use the escape pods to evacuate the ship.”

Picard snapped, “No.”

Worf blinked, his fierce eyes fleetingly puzzled.

Beverly, too, seemed surprised at the captain’s reaction.

“Jean-Luc,” she said, “If we destroy the ship, we’ll destroy the Borg.”

Picard stared hard at his crew, he felt the stirring of emotions long restrained but never mastered: homicidal rage, the blind desire for revenge. “We are going to stay and fight.”

And Dawn understood why she had been drawn to Picard. She was sure she had to convince him to do what his people were suggesting. To make the hard choice, that he did not want to make.

“Sir,” Worf continued, his tone urgent, insistent, “we have lost the Enterprise. We should not sacrifice more—”

“We have not lost the Enterprise, “ Picard interrupted loudly, “and we are not going to lose the Enterprise. Not to the Borg, and not while I’m in command.” He jerked his head to glare at the security officer. “You have your orders.”

Worf and Crusher watched in silence as the younger man nodded again and walked back to the Jefferies tube.

“Captain ...” Worf’s tone grew strident. “I must object to this course of—”

Picard could not keep the pitch of his voice from rising. “Your objection has been noted, Mr. Worf.”

On the Klingon’s deeply sculpted face, anger warred with friendship; Worf drew a breath and visibly calmed himself.

When he spoke again, he did so quietly, calmly. “With all due respect, sir, I believe you are allowing your ... personal experience with the Borg ... to influence your judgment.”

Dawn felt the fury in Picard grow as she watched his officers argue over the course of action.

“I never thought I’d hear myself say this, Worf … but I actually think you’re afraid. You want to destroy the ship and run away.”

The Klingon grew visibly taller where he stood, and broader, as if the heat of anger had caused him physically to expand. In his dark eyes, fire burned—a sight to evoke fear in any human being.

“Jean-Luc ...” Beverly warned, but he waved her into silence, beyond fear, beyond reason, beyond all but the blindness of rage and revenge. He held Worf’s furious gaze and fed it with his own.

“If you were any other man,” the Klingon growled softly, slowly, “I would kill you where you stand.”

“Get off my bridge,” Picard said.

The sound of footsteps brought him back, and he watched, unyielding, as the Klingon turned and moved for the open Jefferies tube hatch, then crawled inside.

Buffy had watched the exchange, too, very little used to stun her. But Picard’s rage and Worf’s reply had done just that. She then looked at Dawn who nodded and then she understood, this was why Dawn was here. This was what her sister had to do.

Picard scanned the faces of his remaining crew, then silently turned and headed into another chamber that opened onto the bridge.

When the door had closed behind him, Beverly turned to Dawn and Buffy. “Let’s go.” She said her tone was one of quiet professionalism.

“No,” Dawn said. “I know what I am here for. Why this has all happened,” she turned and followed Picard off the bridge.

“What does she mean, no?” Beverly asked Buffy. “And what does she mean by knowing why she is here.”

“Just as there are some things you can’t tell us,” Buffy said. “And your captain probably revealed a lot more than he should have. There are some things we can’t tell you, not yet anyways. Maybe a long time from now, if we see each other again after this is over.”

At the conference table in the observation lounge, backlit by Earth and the shining stars, Picard began to disassemble a phaser rifle. The task he had set himself was a difficult one, even for a trained engineer, and unfortunately tedious; and while he worked, his people would be fighting the Borg—and dying.

Yet cold fury held him fast, a fury that shrieked there was no choice. He could not surrender again, could not destroy his own ship.

The door swished suddenly. He glanced up to see Dawn walk calmly into the room. “Jean-Luc,” she said as she stopped on the other side of the table

“Lily, this isn’t really the time—” he replied just as calmly as she had.

“Look,” Dawn said. “I don’t know anything about your time. But I do know that everyone out there thinks that staying here and fighting the Borg is suicide. And seeing how Buffy and I have been the only ones to get measured results against them …”

Picard felt his own expression harden, and said icily, “The crew is accustomed to following my orders.”

Dawn sat down next to Picard and nodded. “That is true,” she said. “Tell me why is it you want revenge on them?”

“Six years ago,” he said hoarsely, “I was assimilated into the collective—had their cybernetic devices implanted throughout my body. I was linked into the hive mind, every trace of individuality erased. I was one of them.”

“That gives you a unique perspective,” Dawn said in understanding. “Tell me why is it you don’t want to abandon this ship?”

“We’ve made too many compromises already, too many retreats! They invade our space and we fall back—they assimilate entire worlds and we fall back! Not again!” His voice grew shrill, began to break. “The line must be drawn here—this far and no further! I will make them pay for what they’ve done!”

The last he said with such force, such volume, such purely maniacal hate that he let go a gasping breath and drew back, startled into silence.

Dawn smiled. “Hello, Captain Ahab!”

“What?” Picard asked.

“You’ve read Moby Dick?” she asked and he nodded. “I am going to quote you a passage. He piled upon the whale’s white hump the sum of all the rage and hate felt by his whole race ... If his chest had been a cannon, he would’ve shot his heart upon it.”

Picard nodded in understanding “Ahab spent years hunting the white whale that crippled him. A quest for vengeance. And in the end, the whale destroyed him—and his ship.”

“That’s right,” Dawn said. “And now you understand what is happening here. You are Ahab, and the Borg are the whale.”

For a long moment, Picard looked into her eyes ... and found there trust. Then he drew a breath of pure resolve and walked out onto the bridge. Immediately, Crusher and the others turned to him, their faces anxious, somber, concerned.

“Prepare to evacuate the Enterprise,” he said.


	6. Rescue

Picard sat in the captain’s chair. He spoke, knowing that at that very instant, most of the surviving crew members were now hurrying to escape pods

“Computer. This is Captain Jean-Luc Picard. Begin autodestruct sequence. Authorization Picard one-one-alpha.”

Nearby, a junior officer worked swiftly at a control panel, typing in a response to the request ENTER DESTINATION COORDINATES.

Immediately, a map of Earth appeared on the screen, which zoomed in on a mere pin dot of land in the South Pacific.

COORDINATES ACCEPTED. LANDING

TARGET: GRAVETT ISLAND. AREA:

TEN SQUARE KILOMETERS.

POPULATION: ZERO.

Beverly, her face drawn and tense as she sat at the captain’s right, continued the litany.

“Computer, this is Commander Beverly Crusher. Confirm autodestruct sequence. Authorization: Crusher two-two-beta.”

To the left, Worf, his voice as subdued: “This is Lieutenant Commander Worf. Confirm autodestruct sequence. Authorization: Worf three-three-gamma.”

Instantly, the computer responded.

“Command authorizations accepted. Awaiting final code to begin countdown.”

“This is Captain Picard: destruct sequence one-A. Fifteen minutes. Silent countdown.” He drew a breath, then felt his throat constrict painfully as he gave the final word: “Enable.”

“Self-destruct in fourteen minutes, fifty-five seconds,” the computer intoned matter-of-factly. “There will be no further audio warnings.”

The three of them—Picard, Worf, Crusher—exchanged a solemn look. Picard rose and took a long, final look at his bridge.

“So much for the Enterprise-E,” Crusher said, wistful.

Picard put a hand on his chair and gave a distracted nod, gazing out at the viewscreen image of the blue, slowly rotating Earth. “I barely knew her.”

“Think they’ll build an F?” she asked; he turned.

Picard smiled at her with his eyes alone. “I have a feeling they’ll keep building them until they run out of letters.”

She nodded, then joined the calm group of bridge personnel, each awaiting a turn to crawl into the Jefferies tube hatch that led to the escape pods. Worf was among them, next in line and already crouching down, ready to climb through the hatch.

“Mr. Worf?” Picard called softly.

The Klingon straightened, waved the next person to take his place, then faced his captain.

Picard met his gaze directly. “I regret some of the things I said to you earlier.”

“Some?” Worf cocked a brow in surprise, but one corner of his lips quirked upward, dimpling one cheek in a very un-Klingon-like display of humor.

Picard returned the smile and extended his hand; Worf immediately took it. “In case there’s any doubt,” the captain said, “you’re the bravest man I’ve ever met.” He paused to glance back at the image of Earth. “See you on Gravett Island.”

The Klingon nodded, gave his captain’s hand one last, firm shake, then moved quickly to the hatch and disappeared.

Picard looked to Buffy and Dawn the last two that remained on the bridge with him.

“Now,” Dawn said. “Isn’t there something we need to do?”

“We?” Picard asked.

“You have a tactical advantage in retrieving your friend,” Buffy said. “One the queen doesn’t understand or may not suspect.”

“I cannot ask you two for your help,” Picard said. “When it means altering what destiny you would have had without our arrival.”

“Did you think this could be our destiny,” Dawn said. “To help you, rescue him?”

Picard looked at the two of them for several moments and then at the viewscreen that showed Earth. Their destiny had been altered with his arrival. But could it be put back on course? “Computer, do you have any information on Lily or Willow Summers?” he asked to the air.

“That information is classified at the highest levels of the Federation.”

Picard looked back at Buffy and Dawn his eyes wide. “Classified?”

Dawn smiled. “Someday I promise you will know the truth. It won’t be today though.”

Picard nodded resignedly. “Without knowing what your destinies might have entailed, I can’t allow you to help me. What would happen if you were Beverly’s distant ancestor? If you helped me and got killed, she would not be here. I can’t risk that.”

“Very well,” Dawn said. “Take care, Captain.”

“And the two of you,” Picard said. “If you see Commander Riker or any of my crew, give them this,” Picard said as held out a padd.

“What is it?” Buffy studied it curiously.

“Orders to find a quiet corner of North America— and stay out of history’s way.”

Buffy and Dawn nodded and headed down the ladder. When they were out of earshot of Picard they stopped.

“I’m going to help him,” Dawn said. “It’s the right thing to do, I know it.”

Buffy nodded and hugged Dawn. “If you get killed, I’m telling.”

And that was all there was to be said as they laughed and then turned in different directions.

Dawn moved calmly and deliberately though the empty ship. She climbed through the tunnels in the wall, making sure the Borg was not aware of her presence until the right moment. It was from the tunnel in the wall she watched what happened below in Engineering as she readied herself.

Below Dawn, Picard crossed the threshold into Engineering. She noted that none of the Borg stirred as he entered and gazed at his surroundings. Which told her, he had been expected.

Dawn noticed movement behind him and then she saw her, the queen.

“What’s wrong, Locutus?” asked she in a voice feminine, seductive, slightly mocking voice. “Don’t you recognize me? Organic minds are such fragile things. How could you forget me so quickly? We were very close, you and I. You can still hear our song.”

Dawn watched as the Queen’s hand touched Picard’s cheek. She placed her hand against the wall of the tunnel and began drawing energy into her.

Picard staggered backward. “Yes,” he said. “I remember you. You were there ... you were there the entire time. But—that ship and all the Borg on it were destroyed.”

Her coy expression grew scornful. “You think in such three dimensional terms.” She turned her angular chin toward one shoulder. “How small you’ve become. Data understands me, don’t you, Data?”

From one of the alcoves, Data stepped forth, his expression composed, entirely emotionless. And almost totally human, golden eyes now blue, brown hair tousled, face almost entirely covered by pink human flesh.

“What have you done to him?” Picard asked with concern.

“Given him what he"s always wanted. Flesh and blood.”

“Let him go,” he demanded. “He’s not the one you want.”

Her lips parted in the sly, slightly mocking smile. “Are you offering yourself to us?”

“Offering myself ... that’s it. I remember now. It wasn’t enough to assimilate me; you wanted me to give myself freely to the Borg, to you.”

She seemed to sense that freedom, to be repelled by it; the corner of an alabaster lip curled in repugnance. “You flatter yourself. I have overseen the assimilation of countless millions. You were no different.”

“You’re lying,” Picard said, with bitter relief.

“You wanted more than just another Borg drone. You wanted the best of both worlds, a human being with a mind of his own who could bridge the gulf between humanity and the Borg. You wanted a counterpart. An equal. But I resisted. I fought you.”

The curled lip rose higher, baring hard, white teeth. “You can’t begin to imagine the life you denied yourself.”

“That’s why you created Locutus—to ease the burden of your lonely existence. But it didn’t work; I resisted. And in the end, you had to turn Locutus into just another drone.”

“You cannot begin to imagine the life you denied yourself,” she said, an unmistakable trace of sadness in her voice, her eyes.

“Together ... nothing could have stopped us.”

He took a deliberate step toward her, fighting to suppress his revulsion. “It’s not too late. Locutus can still be with you, just as you wanted him. An equal.” He shot a sidewise glance at the unresponsive android-human hybrid. “Let Data go, and I will take my place at your side—willingly, without resistance.”

She moved closer, her body almost touching his; she spoke, and he fought not to shudder at the feel of her warm, sterile breath upon his skin. “Such a noble creature—a quality we sometimes lack. We will add your distinctiveness to our own,” she murmured. “Welcome home, Locutus...”

She lifted a hand and stroked cool fingertips teasingly over his cheek; he forced himself not to flinch. Then, abruptly, she turned toward Data. “You’re free to go, Data.”

The human android did not move.

“Data, go,” Picard commanded.

“I do not wish to go,” Data replied simply.

The Borg queen smiled. “As you can see, I’ve already found an equal. Data—deactivate the self-destruct sequence.”

Picard reacted with alarm. He took a desperate step toward Data; immediately, two drones stepped from the shadows behind him, each seizing an arm and holding him fast.

“Data!” he shouted. “Don’t do it! Listen to me!”

Dawn watched as android moved calmly to a computer console and pressed a series of controls with preternatural speed.

“Autodestruct sequence deactivated,” the computer reported.

Dawn prepared to knock the grate out of the way and fire, but something stopped her. She looked at Data and his gaze met hers. And she knew instantly he had a plan. One that might even involve her. His gaze flicked toward a tube and Dawn nodded in understanding without knowing exactly the gas in the tube would do.

The queen directed a smile of purely malevolent triumph at Picard, though her words were still addressed to Data. “Now ... enter the encryption codes and give me computer control.”

Data complied, and as he worked, the queen stared into Picard’s eyes with such infinite malice, infinite satisfaction.

Data looked up from his console; simultaneously, the warp core began to pulse, and all consoles in engineering blinked to life. The near-human android moved to the queen’s side and said, as the two Borg guards dragged Picard toward a surgical table: “He will make an excellent drone.”

The Borg dragged the captain to a surgical table—but let their queen have the honor of slamming the human down upon it.

Dawn watched as Picard stared up at the queen.

“The Phoenix is coming into range,” Data said. “I am bringing the phasers online.”

The queen smiled, gloating, and leaned closer to Picard.

Dawn watched as Data joined the queen and Picard. She watched as the android gave his commanding officer a look and then looked up, at a specific area on a bulkhead next to her.

Was Data telling Picard she was there?”

Data moved to a console, on whose monitor was displayed the long, cylindrical capsule of the Phoenix, with her flanking warp nacelles and Dawn smiled. The Phoenix had risen from the ashes and if they could just wait one more minutes it would be in warp.

The monitor image of Cochrane’s ship was partly obscured by blinking red cross hairs.

“Quantum torpedoes locked,” Data said.

The Borg queen graced Data with a savage smile, her delight in the moment distracting her from commencing surgery upon Picard. “Destroy them.”

Picard drew in a breath as Data returned his attention to the monitor, lifted his android arm, and held the white-gold synthetic hand poised over the controls, on the verge of complying. But then he shot an odd glance back at the queen, turned, and took a step toward her.

“Resistance,” he said, “is futile.”

At that moment Dawn pushed open the grate and the queen turned and looked up. Dawn fired a massive amount of energy at the plasma conduit.

Liquid gas spewed from the resulting puncture.

Data leapt at the queen and grabbed her just as three long black cables snaked downward at her silent command.

Picard had prepared for this moment: at once, he freed himself and stood upon the table to avoid the lethal flood that washed past upon the deck. When the cables arrived, he threw himself at them, succeeded in grabbing one, and began a desperate scramble toward the ceiling—away from the slowly rising gas and toward Dawn.

The moment Picard was on the balcony above the swirls of gas, he moved to help Dawn out of the tunnel in the wall. They looked down at where lay the queen—the pale flesh of her handsome face and hands bubbling as it slowly slid from her skeleton.

Picard moved to a wall panel, opened it, and struck a control. An enormous whoosh followed as the emergency ventilation system set to work; the captain at once moved back to Dawn at the edge of the deck and peered down.

In that brief instant, the powerful vents had already sucked away all but a few last wisps of plasma coolant, revealing a grisly—but relief-inspiring—sight: the stripped metal skeletons of Borg drones, most fallen from their alcoves as they slept, interior metal workings spilled everywhere.

Picard and Dawn made their way to an access ladder and down to the first level. The sprawling metal carcasses were so numerous, the chamber so vast, that they spent some time looking through the black-and-gray sea before finding Data sitting among them.

All of the new human flesh on the android’s face and right arm had been utterly stripped away, exposing the silvery android skeleton beneath; the synthetic flesh on his left arm, however, remained.

Dawn and Picard hurried to him—but Picard was stopped in midstride by a faint whisper ... then two, then three, and more in his head. He knew at once what it was, the voice of the collective. He glanced about the cavernous chamber for any sign of the queen, of surviving drones. At last, when he looked up, he saw to his horror several Borg convulsing on the upper level—unharmed by the gas, but apparently suffering from the harm done their queen.

And still, the voices whispered.

Locutus...

On instinct, he whirled and saw behind him she who was all: a blinking steel cranium atop a smooth metal spine. She writhed in frustrated anguish, struggling to lift herself, to rise, to conquer and control as she had done from the beginning of time.

Her condition might have been seen as frighteningly pathetic—as indeed it was—but Picard wasted no time on such emotions. Instead, he summoned to his mind a million years of misery: a million planets and their lucky inhabitants consumed by fireballs, a billion planets and the not-sofortunate natives assimilated, their wills consumed by the queen, their individual minds forced into endless purgatory.

Picard reached forth with his hands, and with a surge of adrenalized, inhuman strength, seized her slender metal spine and snapped it in two.

Dawn smiled as she watched. She knew that what she had to do, was now done. Picard had gotten his revenge, he had killed Ahab’s whale. And with the queen’s death, Dawn knew that Picard would be no longer be haunted by what had been done to him.

The cranium ceased blinking and glowed stark red for a long, agonizing minute ... then abruptly darkened, and the queen fell still.

When at last Picard turned from the queen, he saw Data, Dawn was helping him to sit up, though he was apparently unharmed.

“Are you all right?” Picard asked.

Apparently the emotion chip was active, for the android replied with remarkable good humor, “I would imagine I look worse than I feel.” He gazed down at the corpse of the queen. “Strange. Part of me is sorry that she is dead.”

“She was ... unique,” Picard said as he looked at Dawn, who was unique as well.

“She brought me closer to humanity than I ever thought possible,” Data confessed. “And for a time, I was tempted by her offer.”

“How long a time?” Dawn wondered.

“Zero point eight six seconds,” said Data, as both Dawn and Picard grinned. “For an android, that is nearly an eternity.”

Still smiling, they helped Data to his feet. “Try to put it behind you, Data,” Picard said.

The android hesitated, his golden eyes intense with curiosity. “Is that what you did, Captain, six years ago?”

The smile abruptly fled Picard’s face as he looked at Dawn. And he remembered how she had persuaded him that he had not done what he had just told Data to do. “No…”

0 – 0 – 0 – 0 – 0

Buffy and Dawn stood on either side of Zefram as they and everyone else gazed up at the sky, at bright lights that shone through the night clouds, the lights that had drawn every townsperson to the silo, the lights of a descending spacecraft.

A murmur passed through the crowd as the colossal ship—a good twenty times the size of the Phoenix—at last emerged from the clouds. To Dawn and Buffy, it looked rather like a huge pterodactyl spreading its great wings as it lowered itself, feet first, to the ground—a sleek, high- tech pterodactyl, of course, with wings suspiciously reminiscent of warp nacelles and landing lights aglitter like jewels. And a domed head in the center.

As it descended, landing gear emerged from its belly, and the “claws,” which had been tucked under the nacelles, began to lower, merging with the gear to form a stable platform. With exceptional grace, it slowed almost to a stop, hovered a few feet above the earth, then settled down so delicately that the ground never shuddered.

Riker and Geordi stepped forward and took Zefram gently by the arm.

“Doctor,” Geordi said softly, “you’re on.”

Zefram stared at them—perfectly sober, yet drunk with awe. “My God. . . they’re really from another world?”

Riker smiled in his easy manner. “And they’re going to want to meet the man who flew that warp ship.”

A whirr, a hiss; a hatch in one of the landing claws began slowly to open. Zefram glanced deliberately toward the shadows where Picard invisibly watched. then took a deep breath and strode over into the blinding circle of light where the alien ship stood. There he waited, expression and eyes bright, nervous, until at last the hatch swung completely open.

Light spilled out, illuminating the night air; three hooded figures emerged, robed in elegant patterned brocades of charcoal, bronze, aubergine. Human-sized,

One of the taller ones pulled back its hood.

It was a man. A handsome man, with a strong jaw, strong cheekbones, coal-black upswept eyebrows—all framed by a severe fringe of coal-black bangs. His skin was pale. And there there were the ears, they were unswept, pointed as a pixie’s, yet they possessed a delicacy and naturalness that was becoming rather than ridiculous.

Behind him, the other aliens lowered their hoods as well, revealing another male with precisely the same coloring and haircut, and a striking woman with the same coloring and fringed bangs, but a waist-length jet braid entwined with jewels.

Slowly, regally, with remarkable and formal composure, the group’s leader walked over to Zefram and raised a hand, palm out. Zefram mimicked the gesture, adding an uncertain smile and a little wave.

The alien indulged in neither. His expression pleasant but decidedly solemn, he kept the hand raised, then separated the thumb, index, and middle fingers from the ring, and little fingers to form two V"s. “Live long and prosper,” he said, in flawless, unaccented English.

Zefram worked frantically to emulate the gesture, but he finally gave up and instead smiled genuinely at the alien. “Um ... thanks.”

The alien tilted his head and cocked a black eyebrow at him.

From the nearby shadows, Buffy and Dawn heard Picard’s voice: “I think it’s time for us to make a discreet exit.”

Beside them, Riker nodded and surreptitiously tapped the small insignia beneath his jacket. “Riker to Enterprise. Stand by to beam us up.” He, Beverly and Geordi moved deeper into the shadows, out of view; Picard stepped to the radiance’s edge and smiled at Buffy and Dawn, who walked up to him.

“I envy you ... the world you’re going to,” Dawn said warmly.

The corner of his lip quirked, and an amused look came over his face; she got the feeling he was thinking of revealing something, but then decided against it. “I envy the two of you,” he said, “taking these first steps into a new frontier.” He said nothing for a time, merely looked at the sisters intently as if to memorize each detail of their faces. At last he said, very gently, “I’ll miss the both of you. And I can never repay you Lily for you did in helping me to rescue my friend.”

“Take care of yourselves,” Buffy said.

“I never did find out,” Picard said as Buffy and Dawn laughed.

“Ask us again when you return home,” Dawn said.

“You will be long dead by then,” he said.

“Maybe, maybe not. We’ll see, Jean-Luc,” Buffy said as the three of them gazed at one another and then she and Dawn forced themselves to walk away, but they remained close enough to hear what happened next.

“Picard to Enterprise. Energize. . .“

Then a strange, shimmering hum. And Buffy and Dawn knew they had gone, and would not see them again for a very long time. Still the sisters could not resist staring up into the night sky watching and waiting. Then they saw what they’d been waiting for: not the horrifying bolts of laserfire streaking earthward, but a flash of rainbow light and a tiny star sailing inside it, then abruptly vanishing into the future.

Three hundred years later Dawn made her way through the corridors of a ship she had last seen the interior of three centuries before. “Bridge,” she said as she entered a turbolift and it proceeded towards the bridge of the USS Enterprise, NCC-1701-E. The moment it stopped she stepped out and looked around and smiled.

Riker was the first to notice her and smiled. “Commander,” he said.

“Commander,” Dawn replied. “Is the captain in his ready room?”

Riker simply nodded as Dawn moved to the door and listened for the door chime.

“Come,” came Picard’s voice seconds after the door chimed.

Dawn stepped into the ready room and Picard looked up at Dawn from his desk and smiled. “Hello, Lily.”

“Hello, Jean-Luc, did everything go alright?” she asked.

“Exactly as you remember it, I’m sure,” Picard said. “Now about that classified … Are you …?”

“El Aurian,” Dawn finished for him. “No. I am a Millennial.” She saw the blank look on Picard’s face and she smiled as she sat across from him. “It’s long story, over three hundred years so far in the making, you know a portion of it.” She went on to tell Picard about being the Spirit of the Millennium about her life up till his arrival in the past and her life after he had returned with his crew to the future.

He looked at her and while he was not sure if he believed there was such a thing as Fate. He believed the rest; the proof after all was sitting there right in front of him staring him in the face. A person over the last several years he had come to call friend. “So, Dawn, dinner with you and your wife in my quarters?”

“Buffy and I will be there,” Dawn replied.


	7. Broken Bow

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 90 years have passed since First Contact. Now Buffy and Dawn are joining the crew of the NX-01

**_April 2151_ **

Dawn smiled as she walked next to Buffy around Spacedock. In the almost ninety years since Zefram had flown the Phoenix with the help of the Enterprise crew, Earth had come a long way. So had she and Buffy. In the years afterwards the sisters had gone on a few dates to try and sort out the growing feelings they had for each other.

“Well, Dawn,” said a voice behind the sisters, “you think she’ll fly?”

Buffy and Dawn turned and saw Jonathan Archer and smiled.

“She’ll fly,” Dawn said.

Archer was one of the very few people who knew who Dawn and Buffy were. And it was only because he had attended the dedication ceremony for the Warp Five complex thirty years earlier where Dawn and Buffy had been in attendance, standing as they had for the sixty years previous by Cochrane’s side.

“I wish my dad could’ve seen this. ...”

“And we wish Zefram could have seen this also,” Buffy said. “But he’s gone … In my opinion some things just didn’t come out fair. I don’t think anybody in Starfleet’ll ever quite forgive the Vulcans for stalling.”

“The worst part is how they pretend they didn’t,” Archer commented drably, “as if we’re too silly to know the difference. I’ve been waiting thirty years for them to open up, and it’s never really happened. They just keep dangling that carrot.”

Dawn waved her hand toward the ship in the drydock before them. “And look at what we’ve done.”

Archer smiled, heartened, and drew a deep breath. “Yes ...” He gazed for a moment at the underbelly of the meaty, stubborn-looking ship’s wide saucer section, then turned a grateful regard to Buffy and Dawn. “With you two around, who needs a ship’s doctor?”

Buffy laughed. “You do, or have you forgotten we are not officially a part of your crew. We are engineering advisors.”

Archer smiled, and sighed happily. “God, she’s beautiful. ...”

“We know,” Dawn said. But she did not wholly agree with the sentiment. She had seen another ship that had borne the same name as this one, Enterprise. The NX-01 was only a stepping stone to that ship.

Suddenly the comm unit next to Dawn chirped. She tapped it. “Advisor Summers.”

“Is Captain Archer with you?”

Archer moved beside Dawn. “Go ahead.”

“Admiral Forrest needs you at Starfleet Medical right away.”

“Very well,” Archer called to the com. “Ask him to stand by. I’m on my way.”

“Thank you, sir.”

Buffy and Dawn quickly followed Archer to a waiting shuttle and headed down to Earth. Upon reaching Starfleet Medical they were joined by Admirals Forrest and Leonard, Commander Williams, Ambassadors Soval and Tos and a female Vulcan.

The Admiral’s knew who Buffy and Dawn were and knew that the Vulcan’s had pulled strings to classify them at the highest levels. He didn’t really know why, but he didn’t ask them to leave either. In fact he had been debating asking them to stay on the Enterprise after her shakedown as permanent officers.

Buffy and Dawn instantly recognized the man in the bed for what he was, Klingon. They wondered if this man could be Worf’s ancestor.

“Admiral,” Archer spoke directly to Forrest and made eye contact with the other two humans, deliberately leaving out the two Vulcans, who now gazed at him with mixed disapproval.

“John, I think you know everyone,” Forrest mentioned, whether it was true or not.

“Not everyone.” Archer studied the big sick guy through the isolation window.

Admiral Leonard tried to help. “He’s a Kling-ott.”

“A Klingon,” one of the Vulcans corrected.

“Where’d you find him?” Dawn asked.

“Oklahoma,” Forrest replied.

“Tulsa, right?” Archer moved closer to the glass.

“A wheat farmer named Moore shot him with a plasma rifle,” Forrest filled in. “Says it was self-defense.”

“Fortunately,” Tos added, “Soval and I have maintained close contact with Qo’noS since the incident occurred.”

Archer turned. “Qo’noS?”

“It’s the Klingon homeworld,” Admiral Leonard said, proud that he could pronounce it.

Forrest eagerly added, “This gentleman is some kind of courier. Evidently, he was carrying crucial information back to his people—”

“When he was nearly killed by your _farmer_ ,” Soval stuck in.

Archer turned and faced them all.

Dawn could tell just from Archer’s posture he was waiting for the other shoe to drop.

Carefully Admiral Forrest finally admitted, “Ambassador Soval thinks it would be best if we push back your launch until we’ve cleared this up—”

“Well, isn’t that a surprise?” Archer snapped. He looked directly at Soval. “You’d think they’d come up with something a little more imaginative this time.”

Soval’s face was impassive. “Captain, the last thing your people need is to make an enemy of the Klingon Empire.”

“If we hadn’t convinced them,” Tos filled in, “to let us take Klaang’s corpse back to Qo’noS, Earth would most likely be facing a squadron of warbirds by the end of—”

“Corpse?” Buffy broke in. “Is he dead?” She stepped past Soval and Admiral Leonard to the ICU door, opened it, and cued a passing physician. “Excuse me—is the Klingon dead?”

“His autonomic system was disrupted by the blast, but his redundant neural functions are still intact, which—”

“Is he going to die?” Buffy asked.

“Not necessarily.”

“Let me get this straight,” Buffy spun on Soval. “You’re going to disconnect him from life support, even though he could recover. Where’s the logic in that?”

“Klaang’s culture finds honor in death,” Soval explained.

“I know that the Klingons have a sense of honor,” Buffy said as she remembered Worf. “That they are a warrior race. That they dream of dying in battle. That does not mean that is the only diplomatic solution, Ambassador.”

“Advisor … Commander Summers is correct,” Forrest said. “We’re not murderers.”

Buffy noted the fact that Forrest had put a rank to her name. She and Dawn both had thought about leaving Earth for a while, just as a test to see if Dawn’s Millennial senses were tied to Earth or whether Dawn was simply a very powerful empath.

Archer turned a cold shoulder to the Vulcans and faced Forrest. “You’re not going to let them do this, are you?”

Soval leaned a little toward them. “The Klingons have demanded we return Klaang immediately.”

“Admiral?” Dawn said throwing her weight in with Archer and Buffy.

Forrest fidgeted. “We may ... need to defer to their judgment,” he said, trying to make everybody happy.

“We’ve deferred to their judgment for a hundred years,” Archer snapped.

“John—”

“He’s right,” Buffy said as she looked first at Dawn and then Archer and finally Soval the only ones that knew she and Dawn were Millennial. “Mine and Dawn’s grandmothers were part of the team that built the Phoenix with Cochrane. I don’t think either of them would like to know that the Vulcan’s have held us back. So how much longer are they going to?”

The Vulcan female stepped forward, quite suddenly, right through the two elder ambassadors. She was the only one with the guts to say what she was thinking.

“Until you’ve proven you’re ready.”

Dawn stepped up in front of the woman. “Do you know who I am?” she asked.

The Vulcan female looked at the ambassadors and then back at Dawn. “No, ma’am.”

“You will …” Dawn started.

“May I speak with you, Dawn,” Soval said, “in private.”

Dawn glared at Soval and then nodded as they walked several feet away.

“Are you sure you wish to go down this road?” Soval asked. “It will reveal that while you and your sister are human, that you are genetic anomalies. Are you sure you want to do that?”

“Soval,” Dawn sighed. “You have been a good friend since you found out how old Buffy and I are. And you did us a great favor pulling in some favors of your own to get Starfleet to mark our records, classified at the highest levels. But Earth needs this. I need this.”

“Why do you need this?” Soval asked.

“I need to know if my abilities are tied to Earth or simply empathic in nature. I need to be out there.”

“You can come on one of our ships.”

“I need a ship where the crew feels emotions,” Dawn replied. “While Vulcans can feel emotion you suppress them for logic. I need a human crew.”

“Why this mission?” Soval wondered. “Why are you and Buffy so impassioned on helping Archer to take the Klingon back to Qo’nos.”

“Because we agree with him,” Dawn replied. “Since Zefram’s warp flight. Vulcan has been holding us, Earth, back. Besides if we return him alive, it could build trust between us and the Klingons.”

“And it may not,” Soval answered. “And the Klingons definitely will not see it the way you do.”

“I know that,” Dawn said. “He is not the first Klingon I’ve met. Remember the times Zefram mentioned cybernetic beings trying to interrupt his warp flight?” Soval nodded. “They were real. They came from the future to stop it. It was the crew of another ship, called Enterprise, that came back to stop it. On that ship was a Klingon. He was a member of their crew and answered to a human captain.”

“Time travel is …”

“Possible,” Dawn said. “Buffy and I were onboard their ship. Far more advanced than anything we had seen.”

“How come we did not know they were there?” Soval asked.

“Because they made sure not to be detected so as not to alter their history any more than it had been altered,” Dawn said. “This is why Buffy and I are siding with Archer. Maybe this Klingon is what leads them to allying with us. And even if it’s not, that Klingon for all we know could be Worf’s ancestor. If he is, we have to make sure he lives.” Soval shook his head as she walked back over to the rest of the group. “Admiral, your decision.”

“We’ve been waiting nearly a century, Ambassador,” Forrest said as Soval returned to them. “This seems as good a time as any to get started.”

“Listen to me,” said Soval, his voice noticeably louder as he looked toward Dawn, trying to tell her that even with this future knowledge they had no way of knowing for sure if any of what happened now would affect it. “You’re making a mistake.”

Archer’s reply was calm, but there was no mistaking the condescension. “When your logic doesn’t work, you raise your voice? You have, been on Earth too long.”

The debate was over.

The Vulcans turned and quickly and quietly left the room.

Forrest waited until they were gone, then winked at Leonard and spoke to Archer, Buffy and Dawn. “I had a feeling their approach wouldn’t sit too well with the three of you. John, don’t screw this up.”

“Admiral,” Buffy said,” the ranks.”

Forrest looked to Buffy and smiled. “They’re yours if you want them. I know you two wanted to travel for a bit. I don’t know the reasons why. But this will give you both the chance.” He looked to Archer. “Their valuable John, even I know that. I may not know what is in their file that has it so heavily classified. But I know that they are valuable, find a place for them in your crew.”

Archer winked at Buffy and Dawn. “I’ll see you both onboard, Commanders.”

“Yes, sir,” Buffy and Dawn replied and they and Archer laughed.

0 – 0 – 0 – 0 – 0

“But the shipment was confirmed for this afternoon,” Malcolm Reed, the Enterprise’s armory office, protested as Buffy and Dawn walked up to them onboard the Enterprise. “I got the bill of lading. How do these things occur? Inefficiency?”

Trip Tucker, the Chief Engineer, shrugged as he looked at the two women. He recognized them of course; as they had helped design the Warp Five engine. Add on top of that Archer had told him that the blonde was to be his executive officer and the brunette was going to be flittering between being his own assistant and the assistant communications officer. Of course with her background he had to wonder why it wasn’t the other way around with him being her assistant. “We’ve had six foul-ups already, and it’s not even breakfast. You’re not the only one.”

“All involving shipments?” Travis Mayweather, the helmsman, asked.

“All but two, which were misinstallations of critical parts for the motive power system. I have to watch my engineers like a mama lion.” Tucker gave a nod to Buffy and Dawn. “Commanders.”

“Don’t worry,” Buffy said. “We’re not underway so we won’t stand on who is a superior rank and who is not. I’m Buffy and this is Dawn.”

“Who made these misinstallations?” Reed asked with a slight nod to Buffy to acknowledge what she had just said.

“Don’t know. We’re trying to trace them, but nobody seems to know where the work orders are coming from. Just confusion, is what I think.”

“Well, I don’t care for that at all ... where’s the captain?”

“Oh, him?” Tucker shrugged again. “Where would you be if you had just ordered your ship fitted out with a seventy-two-hour readiness deadline and you didn’t even have a deflector or a command staff …?”

“He’s in Brazil,” Dawn said. “Rounding out his command staff upon a recommendation I made. I know languages which is why I will be flitting between your department and communications. But I’m not the best and John, wanted the best. So I recommended to him, Hoshi Sato.”


	8. These are the Voyages

“Buffy, Trip,” Archer said after he arrived on the Enterprise and had been filled in, “doesn’t all this strike you two as too many things going wrong?”

“What difference does it make what I think? What do you think?” Tucker said.

Buffy shook her head. “With the fact we’re rushing to get this ship ready in three days’ time. We have to cut a lot of corners …”

“Things are bound to tangle some—” Tucker added.

“This much?” Archer settled on the edge of his desk. “Doesn’t this strike you two as excessive? Something going wrong with almost every shipment of ordnance of any kind? Messages garbled, timelines confused, shipments misdirected—maybe I’m just being overly cautious.”

“Paranoid, you mean?”

“I want it to work, Trip, Buffy.”

“We know,” Buffy said as she smiled at Archer, “John. We all want that. By the way why do we have a Vulcan science officer. I have nothing against them, but I can do the job myself instead of flitting around the bridge because all the positions are taken.”

Archer gave them the bald truth by way of an answer. “Since we needed their starcharts to get to Qo’noS.”

Tucker rolled his eyes. “So we get a few maps ... and they get to put a spy on our ship.”

Archer looked away from his exec and chief engineer out the viewport. “Admiral Forrest says we should think of her as more of a _chaperone_ ,” he attempted.

“I thought the whole point,” Tucker rasped, “was to get away from the Vulcans.”

“That is the argument, Dawn and I made,” Buffy said.

“Four days there, four days back, then she’s gone. In the meantime, we’re to extend her every courtesy,” Archer said.

Trip Tucker groaned low in his chest. “I dunno ... I’d be more comfortable with Buffy here in that position. She’s earned it and more. It surprises me that it took this long for Starfleet to give her and Dawn a commission.”

Before Archer had a chance to respond to Tucker’s comment the door chimed. “Here we go,” he said, “come in.”

The Vulcan in question walked into the room wearing a Vulcan commissar’s uniform.

She offered Tucker and Buffy not so much as an elevator glance, and handed a padd to Archer. “This confirms that I was formally transferred to your command at 0800 hours. Reporting for duty.”

Archer took the padd and gave it a cursory once-over, before handing it over to Buffy who did the same. He looked at T’Pol, her nose was wrinkled, her neck stiff, and her eyes shifting back from a brief shot around the room. “Is there a problem?” he asked.

“No, sir,” she responded

“Oh, I forgot.” He glanced at Tucker and Buffy, then over to the couch, where his dog, Porthos, lay sleeping with three of four paws in the air and his snout off the edge of the cushion. “Vulcan females have a heightened sense of smell ... I hope Porthos isn’t too offensive to you.”

“I’ve been trained to tolerate offensive situations,” T’Pol announced.

Tucker perked up. “I took a shower this morning ... how ’bout you, Captain, Commander?”

T’Pol eyed Tucker, and held her breath as long as she could.

“I’m sorry,” Archer began, pausing just long enough for her to think he might be apologizing for stinkiness. “This is Commander Charles Tucker the Third and Commander Buffy Summers. Sub-Commander T’Pol.”

Tucker jabbed his hand out toward her. “Trip. I’m called Trip.”

T’Pol took a slight breath. “I’ll try to remember that. While you may not share our enthusiasm for this mission, I expect you to follow our rules. What’s said in this room and out on that bridge is privileged information. I don’t want every word I say being picked apart the next day by Vulcan High Command.”

With that last sentence she looked straight at Buffy, she did not know who the woman was or why Soval had taken a liking to her and Dawn. But T’Pol knew that the pair might say something in idle conversation to Soval as one friend to another.

“You have nothing to worry about,” Buffy said. “On this ship I am an officer just as you are. Mine and Dawn’s friendship with Soval will have no bearing here.”

T’Pol nodded. “My superiors simply asked me to assist you.”

“Your superiors don’t think we can flush a toilet without one of you to _assist_ us,” Tucker said.

“I didn’t request this assignment, Captain,” she went on, “and you can be certain that, when this mission’s over, I’ll be as pleased to leave this ship as you’ll be to have me go.”

She flinched suddenly. Porthos had moved off the couch and was at her leg, sniffing her knee.

“If there’s nothing else ...” she said stoically.

“Porthos!” Archer scolded—but he had waited five seconds longer than he would have with anyone else on the business end of that soppy nose.

The dog cast him a glance, and then moved back to his couch.

“That’ll be all,” Archer said.

T’Pol seemed for a moment to be unsure whether he was addressing her or the beagle. Then she turned and left the ready room, heading to the bridge.

The door slid shut. The ready room fell to silence, except for the faint whirring of the vents with a gush of fresh air. When Archer turned, Tucker was watching the vent port with an accusatory glower.

“What do you both think?” Archer asked.

“I think I ought to lube that fan.”

“About her, Trip. What do you two think about T’Pol?”

“You know me, John. Just because I like Soval a little. Doesn’t mean I like her,” Buffy said. “But that can change. But I doubt she likes us anymore than we like her.”

“What Buffy said,” Tucker agreed.

“You think she’s really a spy?” he asked.

“Probably,” Tucker said. “If you think she’s not going to go back to whomever and tell them how we handled ourselves, then you’re more naive than I know.”

“It is very possible she will report to Vulcan High Command,” Buffy agreed. “That is where her loyalties lie. She won’t botch the mission, but she might just make sure we’re held back for another hundred years if we botch the mission.”

“It’s not enough of a mission to botch,” Archer agreed. “We’re delivering a guy from here to someplace else. Returning a Klingon national to his home space. It’s a gesture of good will, and also to show what we can damned well do on our own, with or without anybody else’s favors.” He reached down to scratch Porthos on the top of his head, in the little bump where the dog brain was kept, and wished himself the same kind of peace. “The Vulcans may be queasy about helping us, but I honestly don’t think they’re out to hurt us. I don’t think they’d actively wreck our advancement, once we prove we can get there—”

“Maybe you’re naive after all,” Tucker interrupted. “How many times have you heard them say how we’re ‘not ready’ to go out into the galaxy, or how they’re waiting for us to ‘prove we’re worthy’ of the company of others, and all? What if they don’t think we’re ‘worthy’ yet and they decide to slow us down some for our own good? I mean, John, I’d be lying if I told you that woman doesn’t make me nervous, being here all of a sudden, out of nowhere. Serving as a senior officer! Why would she have to be a senior officer if they just want to keep an eye on us? Don’t think there’s nothing to that. I’d be peekin’ over my shoulder if I was you.”

Archer’s expression changed. He felt his face grow tense. “Is that a serious recommendation? You think my life could be in danger?”

“With her in that position and the Vulcans thinking we’re bad news, hell, yes. Vulcans can be just as devious as anybody, and you’d have to be a sponge to think they couldn’t.”

“Trip’s right,” Buffy agreed. “Just because Vulcans suppress their emotions, doesn’t mean they don’t have them or even in reality feel them.”

Archer nodded charitably. “Any intelligent being can deceive. It goes with the braincase. Sue me if I’d rather think better of them till proven otherwise.”

“Not me. I’ll look over your shoulder for you,” Tucker said.

“But if we don’t give them the benefit of the doubt, then we’re doing to them what they do to us, always assuming the worst. I’m not ready to do that yet.”

“Guess I’m not as nice as you.” Tucker shook his head. “You don’t know her, John.”

“True, we don’t know her,” Buffy said. “But she does not know us either.”

With a sigh, Tucker indulged in a grim, daring smile. “Not yet.”

0 – 0 – 0 – 0 – 0

Buffy and Dawn sat next to Archer and others of his command staff on the spacedock observation deck. The space was awash with dignitaries, invited guests, officers, ambassadors, muckety-mucks, and would-bes. Starfleet brass rubbed elbows with Vulcan emissaries, clusters of pundits, powergrabbers, and publicity wonks, all here on a day’s notice. Some showed obvious signs of jet lag and more than a little confusion at the sudden acceleration of launch.

Admiral Forrest was speaking already, even though not everyone was seated yet. They were really hurrying this along.

Archer glanced at Buffy, Dawn, Tucker, Reed, Mayweather, and Hoshi and the Vulcan, T’Pol.

“When Zephram Cochrane made his legendary warp flight ninety years ago,” the admiral was saying, “and drew the attention of our new friends, the Vulcans, we realized that we weren’t alone in the galaxy.”

The crowd obliged with applause, stretching moments into minutes.

“Today,” continued Forrest, “we’re about to cross a new threshold. For nearly a century, we’ve waded ankle-deep in the ocean of space. Now it’s finally time to swim. The warp five engine wouldn’t be a reality without men like Dr. Cochrane and Henry Archer, who worked so hard to develop it. So it’s only fitting that Henry’s son, Jonathan Archer, will command the first starship powered by that engine.”

Archer looked at Buffy and Dawn and leaned in to whisper to them. “History always seems to forget you two have been a part of this from the beginning.”

“We know,” Dawn whispered back. “But that is the way we want it. The only reason you even know we’ve been a part of it from the beginning is because you met us when you were seven.”

Forrest nodded to Archer. The crowd applauded as Archer, Buffy, Dawn and the rest of the command staff stood up and moved away from their seats.

Archer led his crew toward a set of doors while the admiral kept talking.

“Rather than quoting Dr. Cochrane, I think we should listen to his own words from the dedication ceremony for the Warp Five Complex, thirty-two years ago. ...”

A large screen took over the crowd’s attention as it came alive with archival footage of a very elderly Zephram Cochrane giving a speech in front of a throng of scientists, including Henry Archer, a seven year old Jonathan Archer, Buffy and Dawn, a long time ago.

“On this site,” the crotchety Cochrane began, “a powerful engine will be built. An engine that will someday let us travel a hundred times faster than we can today. ...”

Archer led his crew through the breezeway to the airlock attached directly to the ship. As they moved, the speech was piped through to the bridge.

The bridge was a compact command center, austere and spartan, mostly steel-walled, with a source of light from hidden panels overhead. There were no carpets or amenities, just various stations with bucket seats, and a maze of gauges, dials, and little scanner screens. In the middle was the captain’s chair, to which Archer dutifully moved while the universe watched.

“Imagine it,” Cochrane’s voice thrummed. “Thousands of inhabited planets at our fingertips ... And we’ll be able to explore those strange new worlds, and seek out new life, new civilizations. ... This engine will let us go boldly where no man has gone before.”

Barely conscious of it, Archer noticed his own lips moving to the words. He stopped and cleared his throat. Everybody was waiting for him now.

“Number one,” Archer said with a glance at Buffy

“Detach mooring umbilicals and gravitational supports,” Buffy ordered. “Retract the airlock and disengage us from the Spacedock. Confirm all break-offs. Impulse drive, stand by.”

“Impulse drive standing by, ma’am,” Mayweather responded. “All sublight motive power systems ready.”

“We really should think about finding me a place to sit,” Buffy whispered to Archer.

Archer looked up at Buffy and smiled remembering when he had first seen her and Dawn, when Cochrane had made the speech they now heard from the speakers. “And last I checked you and Dawn were the ones who couldn’t die.”

“True,” Buffy replied. “Doesn’t mean I want to be jostled about either.”

“Point taken,” Archer said as he leaned forward in the command chair.

Dawn sat at the engineering console and looked at Tucker who was on the tie-in screen. She smiled as he stood before the throbbing warp core, looking like an eaglet about to fledge. And she thought back to Zefram after the Phoenix’s maiden voyage.

“Take her out,” Archer said. “Straight and steady, Mr. Mayweather.”

“Ladies and gentlemen,” Admiral Forrest’s voice overlaid Archer’s words. “Starfleet proudly presents to the galaxy ... the faster-than-light long-range cruiser, Enterprise!”

Applause rang and rang in their ears. A shiver went down their arms.

The lean and masculine ship, rugged in construction and blatantly field-ready, undecorated and proud of it, began to move slowly forward, throbbing with power to her innermost bones. Spacedock peeled back from the ship.

“How’re we doing, Trip?” Dawn asked sensing that Archer wanted to know.

Behind Tucker’s voice, the warp engines pulsed at full power. “Ready when you are,” he responded. Sounded both excited and nervous.

“Prepare for warp. Mayweather, lay in a course,” Archer said, and glanced at T’Pol. “Plot with the Vulcan star charts ... direct course to the planet Qo’noS.”

Mayweather’s eyes flicked toward T’Pol, but he studiously managed not to look at her. He worked his navigational controls, which only now, as they cleared the solar system, received clearance from the access-classified star charts brought by their new science officer.

“Course laid in, sir. Request permission to get underway?” Mayweather looked at Archer.

Archer looked at T’Pol and asked silently for confirmation of the course.

She sensed his eyes and looked up. “The coordinates are off by point two degrees.”

Mayweather glanced at her, embarrassed and angry.

But Archer wasn’t about to let her spoil the moment. “Thank you,” he said quickly, and looked up at Buffy. “Number one.”

“On behalf of mine and Dawn’s grandmothers who helped Cochrane build the Phoenix. I’d like to say this. May the wind be at our backs. Engage, Mr. Mayweather.”

“Warp power,” Mayweather uttered aloud, though he didn’t have to. “Warp factor one ...”

The ship surged physically. There was a snap of light, and the crescent of Earth was left behind as if by magical invocation. The whole solar system was suddenly no more than a whim.

“Warp one accomplished,” Mayweather confirmed.

Archer made eye contact with everyone around him ... first Buffy, then Dawn, then T’Pol, then Reed and finally Hoshi.

Archer smiled, then looked at Dawn’s station and in particular the screen that showed Tucker shepherding the engines. “Trip? You okay?”

“Ready and willing,” Tucker responded, but never looked away from the glowing warp core.

Archer looked up at Buffy who nodded. “Go to warp factor two,” she said.

“Warp two,” Mayweather choked.

Another flash, another surge, and the ship shouldered into a multiplicity of speed. Stars blurred. Space itself began to bend to the ship’s will.

“Warp two accomplished, ma’am.”

“I like the feeling,” Archer offered. “Everybody stable? No jumps in the readings?”

No one spoke up.

“Warp factor three,” Buffy said.

Though Mayweather didn’t respond, his hands worked on the helm. Another flash. The surge this time was smoother, and in a moment they had made warp three.

“Good,” Archer commented. “Everybody take a breath. Check your stations. Hoshi, do a ship wide sweep.”

“Shipwide, aye,” Hoshi responded, her voice tight. She was terrified. Giving her something to do was sound operational practice.

“Let’s have warp four, helm,” Archer said.

Somebody gasped.

“Respond to me, Travis,” Archer steadily insisted.

“Oh ... yes, sir. Warp factor four, aye. Sorry.”

“No problem at all. Doing fine. Feels pretty good, actually. Hear that warp hum? I like that.”

“Warp factor four,” Mayweather uttered, “accomplished, Captain. All systems report stable. Helm is steady.”

“Trip?” Dawn asked.

On the engineering monitor, Tucker finally turned to meet Dawn’s gaze. “We’re all-go down here, Dawn. Flow over the dilithium crystals is even. No flux on the power ratios. She looks good.”

“Trip reports all good,” Dawn relayed to Archer.

“Congratulations, Trip ... everybody. Let’s cruise at warp four for a while and see how she does. All hands, standard watch rotation for the next twenty-two hours. T’Pol, how would you like to try the con on for size?”

T\Pol looked up, startled. Clearly she hadn’t expected to take command at all.

Archer looked up at Buffy. “That’s assuming you have no objections, Commander.”

“None,” Buffy replied as Archer stood up, offering T’Pol the hot seat.

T’Pol’s eyes narrowed. She sensed a trap. Perhaps it was. Under the cloying eyes of the crew, she stood up and moved to the center of the bridge and took the command chair. What choice did she have?

“Good,” he said. “Why don’t you join me, Buffy and Dawn for dinner at change of watch? We can all get to know each other. Put the crew at ease, if nothing else.”

She eyed him. “Thank you,” she said.

Choreographing his movements carefully, Archer stepped away from the center followed by Buffy and they moved to the exit hatchway where Dawn joined them. They paused before leaving the bridge, turned, and looked at the expanse of space spilling out before the newest Earth ship, named Enterprise, as she flashed along on her invisible racetrack.

“We made it, Dad,” Archer said as the door slid shut behind him, Buffy and Dawn. “Couldn’t have done it without him and the two of you.”


	9. Dinner

Viscous pink fluid twisted in a jar. Tiny corkscrew organisms flitted through the pink like birds in an eternal microsunset. The jar turned, but the liquid and the flitters pretty much stayed the way they were, enjoying their brainless dance.

“Love what you’ve done with the place. ...”

Archer turned the jar, watching the little life-forms squiggle.

“Those are immunocytic gel worms,” Phlox explained happily. “Try not to shake them.”

Buffy took the jar from Archer and handed it to Phlox. “My apologies, John can be a little curious at times.”

Archer turned his attention to the unconscious Klingon lying on the biobed, not sure what to really ask Phlox.

“So, what’d you think of Earth?” Dawn asked bailing Archer out.

“Intriguing,” Phlox said. “I especially liked the Chinese food. Have you ever tried it?”

Handing off articles from the packing box on top of the desk, Archer shrugged. “I’ve lived in San Francisco all my life.”

“Anatomically, you humans are somewhat simplistic,” Phlox said. “But what you lack biologically, you make up for with your charming optimism. Not to mention your egg drop soup. Be very careful with the blue box.”

Gingerly, Buffy took the box from Archer who had picked it up and handed it to Phlox.

“What’s in there?” Archer asked.

“An Altairian marsupial. Their droppings contain the greatest concentration of regenerative enzymes found anywhere.”

“Their droppings?” Dawn asked.

“If you’re going to try to embrace new worlds, you must try to embrace new ideas.”

Dawn smiled. “Ah,” she said. “Like you. I sense you find this exchange entertaining.”

Phlox blinked as he looked at Dawn. “I was not aware humans had developed empathic abilities.”

“They haven’t,” Dawn said. “I’m unique. Don’t worry you will find out how unique as you are being given clearance to mine and Buffy’s files.”

“Sorry I had to take you away from your program,” Archer finally spoke up, “but our doctors haven’t even heard of a Klingon.”

“Please!” Phlox blurted. “No apologies! What better time to study human beings than when they’re under pressure? It’s a rare opportunity! And your Klingon friend ... I’ve never had a chance to examine a living one before!”

“Ensign Mayweather tells us we’ll be to Qo’noS in about eighty hours.” Buffy said.

“Any chance he’ll be conscious by then?” Archer added.

“There’s a chance he’ll be conscious within the next ten minutes,” Phlox said. “Just not a very good one.”

“Doc,” Dawn said. “He needs to walk. If he can’t walk, he’s as good as dead.”

“I’ll do the best I can.” Phlox smiled infectiously—and his smile got bigger, bigger ... bigger ... weirder ... “Optimism!”

“I’ll leave you two to go over your medical records with the doctor,” Archer said as he headed for the door. “Remember dinner at shift change.”

“We’ll be there,” Buffy said.

Dawn walked over to the computer and tapped in a command and pulled up hers and Buffy’s medical files. “These files are for your eyes only. If you need to talk to someone about these files, the only person you are cleared to talk to is myself, Buffy and Captain Archer.”

Phlox moved over to the console and looked at the files his eyes widening. “You can do all that and you don’t age?” he asked.

“We both can’t do it all,” Buffy said. “Dawn has the main Millennial gifts. I on the other hand only have the fact that I don’t age and like Dawn can’t die.”

Phlox looked to Dawn. “You’re empathic,” he said. “And have the ability to fire electrical energy from the palm of your hand. Remarkable. I would ask for a demonstration, but a starship is not the best place.”

“I can regulate the intensity,” Dawn said. “But you’re right it’s not the best place.”

“How do you acquire the energy, does your body produce it?”

“My body produces no more electrical energy than yours does. While I can use my own and yours, the best sources of electrical energy are the sources around us.”

0 – 0 – 0 – 0 – 0

Buffy and Dawn followed Tucker as he strode from the mess hall into the captain’s private mess chamber. It was a pleasantly appointed room with a table for six, warmly lit by two candles provided by the captain’s steward as a first-meal gift. There was no food yet, but only a basket of breadsticks between the candles.

“You should’ve started without me,” Tucker declared.

“Sit down,” Archer said, afraid Tucker might get away.

Tucker sat in a chair beside Archer as Buffy and Dawn sat opposite them. He snatched up a breadstick. Noisily he began to gnaw, paying special attention to the sesame seeds.

T’Pol raised her chin and looked down her nose at him—literally and figuratively—in clear disapproval of the eating habits.

Archer smiled.

Archer extended the basket of breadsticks first to T’Pol. She obligingly took one and placed it dead center on her plate, then looked at it as if expecting it to explain its intentions.

“T’Pol tells me she’s been living at the Vulcan Compound in Sausalito,” Archer attempted as he he extended the basket to Buffy and Dawn, both of whom took one.

“No kidding,” Tucker blurted. “I lived a few blocks from there when I first joined Starfleet. Great parties at the Vulcan Compound.”

T’Pol didn’t respond, but picked up her knife and fork and began dutifully sawing at the breadstick on her plate. It crumbled almost immediately, and sprayed the tablecloth with crumbs.

“It might be a little easier,” Dawn suggested, “using your fingers.”

“Vulcans don’t touch food with their hands.”

Dawn and Buffy looked at each other and rolled their eyes. They had both seen Soval eat finger foods.

“Can’t wait to see you tackle the spareribs,” Tucker commented as T’Pol changed her approach to the bread-stick.

She held it down with the fork, and began to deliberately saw at it with the butter knife, but she glanced forbiddingly at Tucker.

“Don’t worry,” Archer said. “We know you’re a vegetarian.”

As if conjured, the steward entered from the galley passage with a trolley containing five plates of food. Four meat, one grilled vegetables.

“Looks delicious,” Tucker commented. “Tell the chef I said thanks.”

The steward nodded and simply exited.

Buffy, Dawn, Archer and Tucker began to eat enthusiastically, but T’Pol ignored her food and continued methodically sawing at the breadstick.

“You humans claim to be enlightened,” she said, “yet you still consume the flesh of animals.”

“You know,” Dawn said with a roll of her eyes. “I don’t know how many times I’ve had this conversation with Soval.”

“Grandma taught me never to judge a species by their eating habits,” Tucker mentioned.

“ _Enlightened_ may be too strong a word,” Archer pushed on, “but if you’d been on Earth fifty years ago, I think you’d be impressed by what we’ve gotten done.”

“You’ve yet to embrace either patience or logic,” T’Pol accused. “You remain impulsive carnivores.”

“Yeah?” Tucker blurted. “How about war? Disease? Hunger? Pretty much wiped ’em out in less than two generations. I wouldn’t call that small potatoes.”

“It remains to be seen whether humanity will revert to its baser instincts.”

“We used to have cannibals on Earth.” Tucker leaned closer to her and wagged his eyebrows. “Who knows how far we’ll revert? Lucky for you this isn’t a long mission.”

“Human instinct is pretty strong,” Dawn supported. “You can’t expect us to change overnight.”

T’Pol succeeded in snapping the breadstick with a rather tidy final cut. She slid the piece onto her fork. “With proper discipline, anything’s possible.”

She then ate the piece, as if that were really something worth showing off.

They ate in silence.

Tucker shifted on his seat and asked, “So, Miss TeePol, how long you been on Earth?”

“A few weeks, this occasion. I am not permanently living there.”

“Yeah? Where’d you go to school?”

“At which level?”

“Well ... the latest level.”

“I am Ambassador Soval’s apprentice in interplanetary sociopolitical studies.”

“Really? Got any military training? Like, ever piloted a ship before?”

“Trip,” Archer cut off. “She doesn’t have to pilot the ship. We have helmsmen for that. She’ll get through the next eight days just fine with our support system.”

Don’t badger. Tucker got the message and fell silent again.

T’Pol finished her vegetables and immediately stood up. “Thank you for inviting me to your meeting. I shall return to my post. I have many studies. I must acquaint myself with the vessel in order to be an effective senior officer.”

Archer got to his feet—something he really didn’t have to do as commanding officer—and escorted her to the door. “I hope this is only the first,” he said graciously. “Thank you for coming, Sub-Commander.”

“Yes, Captain. Enjoy your evening.”

And she was gone. Archer stared for a moment at the closed door.

“Not bad,” Tucker commented, “for an _impulsive carnivore_ such as yourself, Captain.”

Archer shook his head in wonderment at all this. “But you notice how forgiving they are of anything the Klingons do, no matter how savage. Humans are unenlightened, but Klingons are _diverse_.”

“As far as the Klingons go,” Buffy started …

“Uppity hypocrites,” Tucker interrupted. “What a surprise.”

“Hey, don’t underestimate her. She did, after all, conquer that primitive breadstick with superior discipline,” Dawn joked.

Tucker laughed.

“Oh, give her some credit,” Archer allowed. “At least she knows she’s not familiar enough with the ship to be effective yet, and she admitted it. That’s not all bad.”

“You’re bending,” Tucker warned. “No bending allowed. Vulcans never bend for us, remember?”

“Are you ready to go to warp four point five?” Archer asked, changing the subject to something they all liked.

“Already?” Tucker sat bolt upright. “It’s only been—what?—ten hours!”

Buffy gave him a sly look and a dangerous grin. “What are we waiting for?”

Tucker seemed to be stricken numb. “I don’t know ... I guess I’m used to bureaucrats and sleepy admirals making the progressive decisions. Twenty memos and a month of means testing, feasibility studies, and role definition.”

“We don’t define roles here anymore, Trip,” Dawn said. “We make a list, cut it in thirds, and give everybody a piece. Let’s gather the operative minds and take the bridge.”

“Delta watch’ll be disappointed.”

“They can stay on duty,” Archer said. “We’re not dismissing them. We’re just horning in.” He put down his suffering chicken leg. “Come on. I’ve had it with sitting around being socially unacceptable. Let’s do some serious shaking down.”


	10. Dead in Space

Archer, Buffy and Dawn were on the bridge, with the primary crew mustered. Malcolm Reed was already on the bridge for some reason. Hoshi showed up a little groggy—she’d been asleep—and Mayweather appeared only a moment after her.

The on-deck bridge crew was uneasy with the appearance of the primary watch, but seemed reassured when all they had to do was stand aside for a few minutes. Any irritation was quickly swallowed in the anticipation of going to warp four point five so many hours early. They could massage their egos later—at higher warp—and enjoy it a lot more.

“Let’s all check our readouts,” Archer ordered as he took the command chair. “Sing out if you see any irregularities. How have the ratios been?”

“Steady as a stone, sir,” Dawn reported, checking her tie-in to the engineering deck. If anything went wrong down there, she’d be the first to see it on her console, with T’Pol a fast second.

At the science station, T’Pol said nothing.

“Everything seems okay to me,” Archer said, and looked at Mayweather. “Why don’t you try four-three?”

Mayweather’s shoulders tightened as he worked his helm controls. The sound of the ship made a slight change in pitch—the engines, increasing everything on an incremental level, across the board.

No calls from Tucker ... so far, so good.

“Warp four point three, sir,” Mayweather reported.

They waited and listened. Would something happen?

Or had it just happened, and this was it? This was the sound of success.

“Not much of a change,” Reed observed.

“I don’t know,” Hoshi spoke up. “Does anybody feel that?”

Archer looked at her. “Feel what?”

“Those vibrations ... like little tremors.”

T’Pol cast Hoshi a cool glance. “You’re imagining it.”

“Number One,” Archer said as he looked at Buffy who stood beside Mayweather.

“Seems all is fine,” Buffy said. “Ensign, warp four point four.”

This time the ship shuddered, and everybody felt it. Sounds thrummed from deep places with the new acceleration. Vibrations racked the deck under their feet.

Hoshi grabbed the sides of her seat. “There! What do you call that!”

“The warp reactor is recalibrating,” T’Pol explained coldly. “It shouldn’t happen again.”

But an alarm went off at Reed’s tactical station.

Hoshi jumped. “Now what?”

“The deflector’s resequencing,” Reed told her. “It’s perfectly normal.”

T’Pol eyed her own board, but said, “Perhaps you’d like to go to your quarters and lie down.”

“Sub-Commander,” Buffy said as she spun on T’Pol. “If Hoshi felt that, it meant that there could have been something wrong. And she did right by mentioning it.”

“My apologies, Commander, you are correct,” T’Pol said.

“Still,” Archer added, “It’s easy to get a little jumpy when you’re traveling at thirty million kilometers a second. Should be old hat in a week’s time.”

Another alarm tone broke over his words, causing Hoshi to flinch again, but Archer just struck the com panel. “Archer.”

“This is Dr. Phlox, Captain. Our patient is regaining consciousness.”

“On my way,” he said. “Dawn.”

Dawn moved to Hoshi’s station and snatched up Hoshi’s translator padd and joined him as he headed for the lift.

Buffy moved and sat down in the command seat. “Steady as she goes.”

“Ma’am, can I have a word with you?” Hoshi asked. “In private.”

Buffy nodded, “T’Pol you have the conn,” she said as she and Hoshi exited the bridge to Archer’s ready room.

Hoshi scowled, “I don’t like her.”

“Why not?” Buffy asked.

“Mostly because she doesn’t like me.”

“You are not alone,” Buffy said with a sigh. “She’s not really very approachable. Of course, she doesn’t care whether she’s liked. She likely won’t be here that long anyways.”

“She wouldn’t care anyway.”

“You need to relax, Hoshi,” Buffy said. “This ship is on the cusp of exploration. If you want to speak to aliens and learn new languages, this is the place to be. You’ll like it after a while.”

“I’ve just never felt anything like that before. There were vibrations that didn’t feel right.”

“That doesn’t surprise me,” Buffy said. “I remember my first time in space. It just didn’t seem real to me. Besides this is supposed to be the shakedown cruise, which means we can iron out the problems and not have the things that don’t feel right happen anymore.”

Hoshi sighed and looked like a lost puppy. “Why do all the interesting things have to happen so far from solid ground?”

Buffy smiled. “Just take things a little slower. Take cues from the people around you instead of the machinery you don’t understand.”

Hoshi looked at Buffy. “What do you mean by that? What about the people?”

“Most of us have been on ships a lot more than you have,” Buffy said. “One of the oldest secrets of success onboard is to do what the old-timers do. If we sleep, you sleep. If we take a shower, you go take a shower. Eat when we eat. And when things seem scary, take cues from those who’ve been through scary things before. Stand back and stand by.”

“Stand back and stand by,” she repeated, tasting the precious advice.

“Right,” she said. “In time, you’ll be the one the rookies are watching for cues. No matter what the legends say, nobody’s born to this.”

“Can I ask you something, why did the Captain take Dawn instead of me? Dawn’s supposed to be my assistant. Shouldn’t she have been replacing me on the bridge while I went with the Captain?”

“Normally, yes,” Buffy said. “But Dawn and I both have some experience with Klingons, the one in the medical bay is not the first we’ve met.”

“When …”

“Sorry, Hoshi, that’s classified.”

0 – 0 – 0 – 0 – 0

As Archer and Dawn stepped into the medical bay they could hear the loud growling of the Klingon, like a werewolf on the prowl.

The Klingon was imposing. Sitting up now, he was absolutely huge. If he stood he would top seven feet. Even sitting he was eye to eye with Archer. Wisely, the doctor had tied him down.

Klaang barked and snapped furiously. “Pung ghap HoS!”

Archer flinched at the rage of a strong warrior only inches from him, and was suddenly glad of the security guard, very nearly six-foot-five himself, armed with a plasma rifle and eyeing the delirious Klingon with a hungry glower.

Dawn was picking and poking at her translator padd, frowning at the information on the tiny screen.

“What’s wrong?” Archer asked.

“The translator’s not locking onto his dialect. The syntax won’t align.”

“DujDaj Hegh!”

“Tell him we’re taking him home,” Archer said simply.

Dawn glanced at Archer with a frown. “If you wanted flawless Klingon, you should have chosen Hoshi. Remember Buffy and I are more cultural experts since we met Worf.”

Archer sighed, “Dawn.”

Dawn nodded. “Ingan ... Hoch ... juH.”

“Tujpa’qul Dun?”

“He wants to know who we are,” Dawn said. “Well I hope anyways. I only started learning the language since we agreed to take him home.”

“That’s okay, Dawn. I know you wouldn’t be perfect.”

Dawn turned to the Klingon. “Qu’ghewmey Enterprise. PuqloD.”

“Nentay lupHom!”

Dawn repeated one of the words for her own benefit, then concluded, “Ship. He’s asking for his ship back.”

“Say it was destroyed.”

“SonchIy.”

Klaang erupted in a raving protest and roared, “Vengen Sto’vo’kor Dos!”

 

“I know Sto’vo’kor has something to do with the Klingon afterlife. It’s where their honored dead go. The rest I’m not sure.”

“Try the translator again.” Frustrated, Archer tried to contain his impatience.

Dawn worked with the padd. It didn’t help.

“I’m going to help Hoshi run what we’ve got through the phonetic processor.”

“MajOa blmoHqu!”

Archer turned to her again, but Dawn could only offer, “He says his wife has grown ugly. And I’m not even sure that’s what he said. Hoshi and I will find out.”

“Excuse me,” the doctor butted in as he took a scan of the Klingon. “His prefrontal cortex is hyperstimulated. I doubt he has any idea what he’s saying.”

“Hljol OaOqu’nay!”

“I think Phlox is right,” Dawn said. “Unless _stinky boots_ has something to do with all this.”

The ship shuddered under them, sending Dawn wobbling against the Klingon’s bed. Archer caught her arm and pulled her from the bed. The guy had spiked leg bands, after all.

“OaOqu’nay!”

Archer hurried to the nearest wall com. “Bridge, report on that.”

“We’ve dropped out of warp, sir,” Buffy’s voice announced with a shiver of electrical static. “Main power is—”

A burst of static. The com went dead. The lights flickered suddenly—then, consoles all around sickbay began to go dark, one by one!

Archer instantly crossed to the com booster and played with the controls, but all he could get was a ghost of the action on the bridge. “Buffy! Respond!” he attempted. “Tucker! Anybody?”

The com chittered, but there was no sense to it. “It might be the sensors going dark,” Dawn suggested.

The sickbay went finally to total darkness. The Klingon raged on his bed.

The security guard shambled about, though he didn’t know what to do.

The com was completely dead. The ship was dark.

“Dawn, talk to me,” Archer said.

“I sense panic and fear,” Dawn said. “I also sense something else, something with a malicious intent.

The ship’s power depleted rapidly as it came to a grinding halt.

“Where are the handheld lights?” Archer demanded. “Phlox!”

“I don’t know, Captain. I haven’t inventoried those yet.”

“They’ve got to be in a drawer or a cabinet. Feel around. We can’t do anything if we can’t see. Dawn, look around for the beacons. Guard, you, too.”

“Aye, sir,” the guard rumbled.

Dawn started moving. She searched through cabinets and drawers. A few moments later, she was the one who found them.

Instantly, sickbay glowed with red lights. Klaang continued to bellow his maddening protests.

Archer paused and forced himself to think. “Auxiliary power should’ve kicked in by now ...”

When the Klingon growled and spat again, louder now that nobody was paying attention to him, Archer added, “Do you know how to tell him to shut up?”

Dawn shook her head. “Not offhand.”

“Sedate him if you have to,” Archer snapped to Phlox. “I need to get to the bridge!”

“Captain!”

Archer whirled at Dawn’s shocked cry. What could have shocked her so much to make her cry out like that, he had to wonder. He knew there had to be very little that could shock her given what she had seen in the last hundred and fifty years. He turned and saw she was moving her beacon across the lateral bulkhead.

Without waiting for him to ask, she said, “The malicious intent, is in here.”

Archer glanced around the poorly lit room. “Dawn, speak to me.”

“I can sense him,” Dawn said as she stopped moving.

Archer followed her beacon to the wall again—A humanoid form!

Like a chameleon, the form had taken on the appearance of the background, complete with certificates and alien life-forms in jars on the shelves! It was barely visible, but now that they focused, there was no mistaking the intrusion.

Once discovered, the creature leaped from its hiding place back into the shadows.

On the biobed, Klaang fell to bizarre quiet. “Suliban!” he growled.

Archer spun, flashing his own beacon across the wall, trying to rediscover the—what was the word? Suliban ... well, he didn’t need any help translating that. Boogeyman.

Another one! Perched high on the wall like a spider! But this one wasn’t camouflaged like the other.

This one had blotchy skin, almost tie-dyed, with eyes that were clearly evolved for some kind of night vision.

“Crewman!” Archer shouted.

The guard’s rifle snapped up just as the Suliban leaped to the ground and met a third one darting from the shadows!

The guard fired. Plasma bullets flashed through the room in quick stroboscopic flashes. Now the action turned to rapid cuts illuminated by the strobes. Klaang yanking around in frustration and shouting in Klingon ... the guard swinging around to take aim again at something he sensed behind him—

And one of the Suliban leaping onto the big boy. The guard hit the deck, and so did his plasma rifle.

The weapon rattled and skidded away.

Archer lunged toward the weapon, hoping he was going in the right direction, but lost his handheld beacon as he struck the deck. Dawn’s beacon was gone now, too. “Was she hurt?” he wondered.

The rifle fell into his hands, like a warhorse seeking a rider, and he whirled it toward the nearest Suliban. Taking an instant to be sure he wasn’t shooting at his own people, he opened fire.

The Suliban was hit, and flew backward into the wall.

At Archer’s right elbow, Klaang stared upward and spat an accusation. Suliban directly overhead!

The creature dropped from the ceiling! Archer felt the hard strike of a heavy body on the back of his head and neck. He was driven to the deck under a crushing weight, the plasma rifle trapped under his ribs.

The room went dark again—and very abruptly silent.

“John ...?” Dawn spoke.

Archer tried to roll over. This time he felt no resistance. Whatever had been on top of him was now gone. As he got to his knees, a surge of power thrummed up through the skeleton of the ship under his knees and hands. One by one, the consoles began to flicker and light themselves.

Warp power! It was coming back!

The guard was just sitting up, dazed. Phlox rushed to help him. Dawn found herself crouched beside the dead Suliban. “Definitely not something I recognize,” she said.

Archer staggered to his feet and looked around as the lights came back on all the way.

The biobed was empty. The Klingon was gone.

And so were the two Suliban interlopers who had survived the past few moments.


	11. Anger

A shipwide search turned up nothing. The Suliban and the Klaang were gone. But where they weren’t sure, but they know that neither the Suliban or Klang were onboard anymore.

Archer paced the bridge, agitated as Buffy watched him from his chair. “We’ve got state-of-the-art sensors,” he complained angrily. “Why in hell didn’t we detect them?”

“Malcom thought he detected something right before we lost power,” Buffy said.

Archer whirled on Reed, who was working his tactical and security console. After a moment, the lieutenant offered, “The starboard sensor logs recorded a spatial disturbance.”

Tucker leaned over Reed’s shoulder. “Looks more like a glitch.”

“Those weren’t glitches in sickbay,” Dawn noted.

Archer turned to Tucker. “I want a complete analysis of that disturbance.”

Tucker responded by heading for the door, and Archer returned to Reed.

“Where do we stand on weapons?”

“I still have to tune the targeting sensors,” Reed admitted unhappily.

“What’re you waiting for?” Archer snapped at them.

Reed joined Tucker and hurried off the bridge to do the work that should’ve been done before they left Earth.

“Captain,” T’Pol began, crossing toward him.

He ignored her and swung instead to Dawn and Hoshi. “The Klingon seemed to know who they were. See if you two can translate what he said.”

“Right away,” Hoshi said, and she and Dawn also turned to go.

“Captain,” T’Pol attempted again.

“You and I will talk in a moment, Commander,” Archer told Buffy as she spun to face T’Pol.

“There’s no way you could have anticipated this. I’m sure Ambassador Soval will understand.”

“You’re the science officer,” Archer blurted. “Why don’t you help Tucker with that analysis?”

“The astrometric computer in San Francisco will be far more effective.”

“We’re not going to San Francisco, so make do with what we’ve got here.”

“You’ve lost the Klingon,” she said. “Your mission is over.”

Buffy was instantly out of the chair and in T’Pol’s face, the Slayer within her itching for a fight she had not had in a long time. “We didn’t ‘lose’ the Klingon. He was taken. And we’re going to find out who took him.”

“How do you plan to do that?” she asked reasonably. “Space is very big, Commander. A shadow on your sensors won’t help you find them. This is a foolish mission.”

“Come with me,” Archer said. He followed by Buffy and T’Pol stepped into his ready room and he almost instantly whirled on T’Pol.

“I’m not interested in what you think about this mission,” Archer said. “So take your Vulcan cynicism and bury it along with your repressed emotions.”

“Your reaction to this situation,” T’Pol protested, “is a perfect example of why your species should remain in its own star system.”

Buffy closed the small distance between her and T’Pol in an openly hostile manner. “I’ve been listening to you Vulcans for ninety years tell us what not to do all. I watched John’s father, myself and Dawn work our asses off while your scientists held back just enough information to keep us from succeeding.”

“Ninety years …?” T’Pol began.

“Contact Ambassador Soval, see if he will give you clearance for mine and Dawn’s files,” Buffy replied angrily. “Anyways John’s father should have been standing beside me and Dawn to see that launch. Just as Dawn and I stood beside Zefram when your people made first contact.”

T’Pol was affected by Buffy’s words, perhaps more by her passion, but she didn’t back down. “You two are going to be contacting Starfleet,” she said, “to advise them of the situation.”

“No, we’re not,” Archer said with a warning glower. “And the only thing you will contact them for is permission to see Buffy and Dawn’s files; you will not contact them for anything else. Now get the hell out of here and make yourself useful.”

With nothing more to say, she had no choice but to simply leave. Neither Buffy nor Archer could imagine Reed or Tucker welcoming her help or even her presence in their work. That was her problem, something she had set up for herself with her own lack of manners.

Archer stalked the ready room—which wasn’t much of a stalking space at all, but only a tiny excuse for an office where the captain might be able to be alone once in a while. “Buffy,” he said after a moment. “I know you’re not a seasoned officer. But your part in this could have been handled better.”

“John,” Buffy said. “I know that, but you need to give me, Dawn and even Hoshi some latitude. Let us do our jobs and learn from our mistakes.”

Archer sighed and nodded. “You are right of course.” He moved to his desk and hit the com. “Sickbay, Archer. Phlox, Buffy and I are coming down there and I want some answers ready when we arrive. Make them up if you have to, but give us something.”

0 – 0 – 0 – 0 – 0

“Yes, Ambassador,” T’Pol said, she had contact Ambassador Soval. Something didn’t seem right about either Commander Summers. “She acted outwardly hostile. And when she mentioned that she stood by Zefram Cochrane I became …”

“I doubt curious is the right word,” Soval replied. “But I expect at least some curiousity on how either of the Summers sisters are over ninety years old. I met them fifty years ago. At that time Buffy was already 120 years old and Dawn was 114 years old.”

“It is impossible that they are that old and yet look like they are in their early twenties.”

“They are what are called Millennials. The word is human in origin; it means a person or persons that will live for one thousand of their years. When I first learned they were Millennials, Sub-Commander. I did not believe any more than you did. But since they were part of the team working on the human’s warp drive, I was around them. I watched as their colleagues around them grew older and yet they did not. One day there was a mishap in the complex, and humans were trapped by a wall of electricity. Dawn walked into the corridor and absorbed the energy into her own body. It was then I realized what I had been told was true. That Dawn herself was born to live the span of a thousand years, experiencing the weight of the world’s emotions. That’s what Dawn said a Millennial does, that they are the human embodiment of what happens around them.”

“That’s why they are on this ship?” T’Pol asked already knowing the answer. “To see if she still felt the weight of the emotions of the world of if she was simply an empath with the ability to sense only those around her.”

“Correct,” Soval said. “Now Sub-Commander, you know the truth. This information is classified at the highest levels of Starfleet as well as the Vulcan High Command. The only people you may talk to about this is myself, Buffy, Dawn, Captain Archer and anyone else they themselves have given clearance too. I believe Dawn and Buffy did give the ship’s physician, Phlox access to their files. I am transmitting the codes for you to access those same files. Read up on them.”

0 – 0 – 0 – 0 – 0

Dimly lit except for the surgical lamp shining down on the dead intruder, sickbay was almost like it had been during those moments of attack. Phlox’s gloved hands were busy inside the opened chest of the dead creature. He picked enthusiastically through the entrails as Archer and Buffy watched.

“Mr. Klaang was right about one thing,” the doctor said. “He’s a Suliban. But unless I’m mistaken, he’s not an ordinary one.”

Archer’s throat tightened. How could he tell that this Suliban was special if he had no experience with what an ordinary Suliban was? And he didn’t feel much like taking biology lessons. Were there short answers? “Meaning?”

“His DNA is Suliban ... but his anatomy has been altered. Look at this lung. Five bronchial tubes. It should only have three. And look at the alveoli clusters. They’ve been modified to process different kinds of atmospheres.”

“Are you saying he might be a demon?” Buffy asked.

If Phlox hadn’t seen her and Dawn’s files he might have questioned her use of the word. “Yes, I suppose I am. But this is no vampire or other supernatural creature you fought back in the late twentieth century. This man was the recipient of some very sophisticated genetic engineering.”

Like a kid in a candy store, Phlox almost giggled with delight at his discovery. He activated a tiny instrument with a thin red beam and shined the light on the Suliban’s dappled face.

“Watch this.”

He moved the light, revealing that the skin had changed color, perfectly matching the hue and intensity of the red light.

“Subcutaneous pigment sacs.”

“He’s a chameleon,” Buffy said.

“Correct,” he said as he tapped a control on the little instrument and the color of the light changed to blue. He shined it on the Suliban’s clothing this time, instead of its face. The clothing also adapted to the new color. The clothing?

“A biomimetic garment!” Phlox piped, delighted.

Archer didn’t even bother trying to control his amazement.

“The eyes are my favorite,” Phlox went on. He lifted an eyelid on the corpse, exposing a superdilated pupil that glowed nearly phosphorescent. “Compound retinas. He most likely saw things even your sensors couldn’t detect.”

“It’s not in their genome?” Archer asked.

“Certainly not. The Suliban are no more evolved than humans. Very impressive work, though ... I’ve never seen anything quite like it.”

“What do you know about them?” Buffy wondered. “Where do they come from?”

“They’re nomadic, I believe,” Phlox said. “No homeworld. I examined two of them years ago. A husband and wife. Very cordial.”

“Look, Doctor,” Archer began tersely, “I’m not in a pleasant mood. I don’t want to hear about anything nice or cordial or even intriguing right now. I want to know where the Klingon went, how the Suliban got onto this ship, and how they got off it. Something tells me they didn’t jump out a space hatch and go for a random free-float. They went someplace. I mean to find out where. None of the answers to those questions is bound to be nice, so you don’t have to feel obliged to smile or twinkle at me anymore.” He jabbed a finger at the body on the bed. “You have the only piece of concrete evidence we own. I’m giving you my permission to get ugly. If you have to set up candles and a Ouija board and bring this corpse back to life, I want to know how they did what they did today on my ship. Do I have to say any of that a second time? Good.”

As Buffy and Archer left she glanced at her friend. “John, I know why you’re angry that this happened on your ship. But you need to stop taking it out on the crew. They are just doing their jobs.”

Archer looked toward Buffy and let out sigh. He knew she was right. And as his first officer he couldn’t fault her for saying it, was after all her responsibility to do so. In fact he knew as well as she that she had the right to relieve him of duty should he be a detriment to the crew or the ship.

“I know,” he said. “But tell me you yourself would not be reacting the same way if you were in my position.”

“You know I would be,” Buffy said. “But that is more because of what I am. Half-Millennial, Half-Slayer. The Slayer half of me is itching for a fight right now. And during my next shift off, I will be in my quarters punching a punching bag in hopes of appeasing the Slayer half of me.”

They turned and entered Engineering and found Tucker and T’Pol going over the scans. “Any luck,” Archer asked.

Tucker glanced at the Vulcan. “Not really.”

T’Pol had a longer version. “My analysis of the spatial disturbance Mr. Reed saw indicates a stealth vessel with a tricyclic plasma drive.”

“If we can figure out the decay rate of their plasma,” Tucker said, “we’ll be able to find their warp trail.”

“Unfortunately your sensors weren’t designed to measure plasma decay.”

Both men looked at T’Pol with varying degrees of resentment. She didn’t mean the _unfortunately_ part.

Tucker didn’t make any comment.

Dawn walked in behind Archer and Buffy and instantly stopped short at what she felt from Archer. “John,” she said as he looked to her.

Archer let out a sigh, sometimes he hated that Dawn could feel what others felt. “What’ve you and Hoshi got?” Archer asked.

“We’ve managed to translate most of what Klaang said. But none of it makes any sense.” She handed him a padd.

Archer took it and read the screen before handing it to Buffy who did the same. “Nothing about the Suliban?”

“Nope.”

Buffy looked to T’Pol. “That name ring a bell to you?”

“They’re a somewhat primitive species from Sector 3641. But they’ve never posed a threat.”

“Well, they have now,” Archer stated before turning back to Dawn. “Did he say anything about Earth?”

Dawn shrugged. “The word’s not even in their database.”

Archer eyed the padd still held in Buffy’s hands.

“It’s all there,” Dawn said. “Between Hoshi and I there were only four words we couldn’t translate ... probably just proper nouns.”

Buffy looked again at the padd. “Jelik ... Sarin ... Rigel ... Tholia ... Anything sound familiar?”

T’Pol hesitated, uneasy.

“T’Pol?” Archer sternly pressed.

She paused again, glanced at Tucker, who was careful to give her one of those get-cracking looks.

“Rigel,” she finally began, “is a planetary system approximately fifteen light-years from our present position.”

“Why the hesitation?” Archer challenged.

Realizing she was about to knock the stick off his shoulder again, she decided to shell out. “According to the navigational logs salvaged from Klaang’s ship, Rigel Ten was the last place he stopped before crashing on your planet.”

Though Archer’s face flushed with new anger, he plainly wasn’t surprised. “Why do I get the feeling you weren’t going to share that little piece of information?”

“I wasn’t authorized to reveal the details of our findings.”

“On this ship, you don’t answer to the Vulcan High Command,” Buffy said. “You are under John’s command. You answer to him and myself as we are your superior officers. If we find out you are withholding information again, you’re going to spend the rest of this voyage confined to too your quarters. Understood?”

T’Pol’s expression was hard to read, but she didn’t have any snotty remarks. In fact she said nothing at all.

Archer hit the wall com. “Archer to helm.”

“Aye, sir,” Mayweather responded from the bridge.

“Go into the Vulcan star charts and find a system called Rigel. Then set a course for the tenth planet.”

“Aye, Captain, right away.”

Turning to T’Pol, Archer strictly said, “You’re going to be working with us from now on.”

She paled a little, but owned up to her reasons. “I’m sorry you feel slighted. But I agree with Ambassador Soval’s restraint in giving Earth too much information. Perhaps the last thing we need is another volatile race in space with warp power. You may easily go out and get yourselves killed. It may be a mistake to have helped you so much, to give you so much before you are ready.”

“So much?” Archer barked. “You’d better use the next portion of your long lifetime to go back over the records and see just how much we’ve done on our own, in spite of your cultural cowardice.”

“Cowardice?” Her eyes widened.

Archer closed the step between him and her. “I’ve been thinking about Vulcans all my life. You’ve been in space a long time, and suddenly the game is complex. Vulcans are logical, but it won’t be enough. You’ve been advanced for a thousand years, and suddenly you’re being overrun by us rabbits. The clock is ticking. All sorts of species are moving out into the galaxy. Maybe you don’t need another volatile race out there, but guess what—they’re everywhere. The galaxy will be driven by passion, not prudence. You haven’t been holding back because you think we’re so primitive—if you thought that, you wouldn’t be bothering with humanity at all. Being logical allows you to say, _that is a new idea; therefore it hasn’t been proven; therefore I don’t have to pay any attention to it._ ”

“Shall we give you the knowledge to rush out into the galaxy and cause chaos?” she gulped. “Humans claim some right to know that which has been earned by others—”

“We never said that,” Dawn said. “You offered. On the galactic scale, ninety years this way or that is nothing. When you see somebody is ready to walk, why hold back? There’s more going on with you people.”

“You’re not the cutting edge anymore, are you?” Archer badgered. “In a thousand years, why has Vulcan progress been so slow? And here comes Earth, making wild advances in less than two hundred years. You’re dragging behind, and now you need us more than we need you. Why else would you want to come and teach the apes how to sew? I think all this is happening because you’re plain scared of being out there alone anymore.”

Stunned, T’Pol parted her lips again. Nothing came out this time. She never blinked, as if staring at a flashing billboard declaring their words to the known galaxy. They were saying the Vulcans were doomed.

Nobody had the guts to say that to their faces.

Archer pointed at T’Pol with a determined finger. “You get on that warp trail. And you’d better find something or be able to explain why not in very clear terms. Dismissed.”

T’Pol blinked almost as if he’d slapped her. She turned on her heel and exited without a word, taking a cloud of confusion along on her shoulders.

“Hoshi and I will keep learning Klingon,” Dawn offered. “But, John, you and I need to talk.”

Archer let out a sigh and as he flexed his shoulders, took a deep breath, and let his arms sag. “I know, Dawn. By the way I think you’ve found our answers on your gifts.”

“I know,” Dawn replied. She had not been away from Earth more than a day and already she had realized the only emotions she felt were those of the crew. She had gotten away from the overwhelming weight of everyone on Earth’s emotions.

“Maybe now we know why we had so many quirks and misdirections with the last three days before launch,” Archer contemplated. He turned to lean on the console that had provided such little information.

“You think they infiltrated before we left Earth?” Tucker said.

Archer shrugged. “I don’t know. It’s a possibility. Getting off the ship is far less problematic than getting on, but where they went presents us with a goading mystery. I don’t like goading mysteries.”

“Yes, you do,” Buffy said as a smile graced her lips. “They had a ship following us, and they went over there.”

“If we can find the trail, we’ll follow them. If not, I’ll go to Qo’noS anyway and start there. Klaang’s mother might know something.”

Tucker shook his head in worried respect for the sheer gall of that plan. “Why would these Sulibans want to blow our chances to make nice with the Klingons?”

“Permission to speak freely,” Dawn said as Archer nodded in understanding. She wanted official permission to discuss her Millennial gifts in front of Tucker. “What I sensed from them was not about them blowing our chances. I got the impression they were not trying to stop us. I got the feeling this had something to do with Klaang.”

“What is she talking about?” Tucker asked.

“I have gifts,” Dawn said. “One of them is empathic in nature. I can sense emotions from those around me. When I was on Earth I could feel everything that everyone on the planet felt.”

“It’s true, Trip.” Archer said. “It’s in part why both hers and Buffy’s files are classified at the highest levels of Starfleet.”

“Wow,” Tucker said. “Still it is possible they might want to ruin our chances to make nice with the Klingons, also.”

Archer smiled cannily. “We’re not dismissing that possibility, Trip, believe me. Just because Dawn could sense what they were feeling. Doesn’t mean they didn’t have larger goals in mind also.”

Tucker shifted on his feet as he looked at Buffy and Dawn. “You two were pretty hard on Lady Jane.”

“We mean to be harder on her,” Buffy said. “It was inexcusable that she withheld vital information. Something I intend to discuss with Soval when she is transferred back to his command after our mission. Till then she’s about to discover what the term _short leash_ means.”

Appreciatively Tucker nodded and bobbed his brows. “Probably smart, now we know for sure she’s been hiding information from us on purpose.”

“She’d better knock it off, too.” Abruptly, Archer turned grim. “She’s my science officer now, not Soval’s patsy. She’ll learn that lesson over the next week if I have to tattoo it on her tongue.”

“Good thing it was you guys chewing her out instead of me. I’d have punched her in the nose.”

“She’d hit me back,” Archer said. “And she’d probably break my jaw. Out of all of Buffy is the only one who could physically take her.”

Tucker looked at Buffy surprised at that remark. He opened his mouth to ask how, but the question never left his lips.

“It’s classified, Trip,” Buffy said. “Technically you aren’t cleared to know about Dawn’s empathic gift, It’s why she asked for John’s permission to reveal it to you. We’ll work on getting you full clearance, I promise. You after all have been, like John, a good friend.”

Tucker nodded and then grinned, though rather drably. “T’Pol, uh ... she came on the ship about the same time as all our little troubles started ...” He broached the subject, then let it hang there. He didn’t seem to have quite the conviction for a direct accusation.

“While she suppresses her emotions like all Vulcans,” Dawn said. “Something like that I don’t think she could suppress. Still …”

“We’ll wait and see,” Archer finished for Dawn. “Besides she’s just learning about us. As Vulcans go, she’s very young. I get the feeling she’s as much in the middle as we are. She could be just echoing what she’s been taught all her life, and doing what she was told to do. Just a feeling, though. Anyway, I won’t ignore your concerns or Dawn’s empathic gifts.” He looked to Buffy. “In the meantime, organize a landing party. Make T’Pol part of it.”

Buffy nodded. “Aye, sir. Trip, Dawn I want the both of you also and I want Malcom.”

“Do I have to go along with her?” Tucker asked meaning T’Pol.

“It’ll show her which team she’s on,” Archer said. “And Buffy take Mayweather, he’s spent his whole life in space dealing with merchants and travelers. Let’s use what we have and get this done.”


	12. Rigel Ten

Chapter 11: Rigel Ten

“Once we’ve tied down, we’ll be descending into the trade complex. It’s got thirty-six levels.” Buffy paused and looked at T’Pol, indicating that she should take over.

“Your translators have been programmed for Rigelian. However, you’ll encounter numerous other species. Many of them are known to be impatient with newcomers. None of them have seen a human before. You have a tendency to be gregarious. I suggest you restrain that tendency,” T’Pol said.

“You forgot to warn us about the drinking water,” Tucker complained as he belted his jacket and took one of the communicator/translator devices T’Pol was handing out to the landing party.

T’Pol didn’t even get Tucker’s comment. She went on to the next thing. “Dr. Phlox isn’t concerned with food and water. But he does caution against intimate contact.”

“The Vulcans told us Klaang was a courier. If he was here to get something, then whoever gave it to him might know why he was taken. That was only a few days ago,” Buffy added optimistically, “and a seven-foot Klingon doesn’t go unnoticed. T’Pol’s been here before, so we’ll follow her lead.”

“Where do we rendezvous if we find something?” Dawn asked.

“Back at the shuttlepod. And no one goes anywhere alone. From what I’ve heard about this place, it’s an alien version of an Oriental bazaar. Don’t stop to buy trinkets. Ask simple questions, get direct answers. If you don’t like what you hear, move on. There are a lot of people down there, or versions of people. Don’t get swallowed up. Watch each other. Clear?” Buffy said.

Whether it was or not, they were on their way. The six-seat subwarp shuttlepod was functional, but not really comfortable, and the trip down to the planet seemed longer than it was.

Mayweather brought the pod into the atmosphere and found himself bucking snow-torn slopes and high winds. “Approaching what appears to be a landing deck.” He squinted out the windshield. “I see a trail of lights. Runway, possibly.”

“I’d say this spaceport accommodates all kinds of craft,” Buffy confirmed, just to make them all feel better.

The sight was eerily familiar to anyone who recognized a travel center. There was no fanfare, no ceremony, no warnings or threats as they came down. T’Pol used her knowledge of this place to secure a parking spot where the shuttlepod had a chance of not being plundered, and they immediately disembarked and broke into teams.

Trying to appear casual, Buffy and Dawn went first to the dock-master’s control tower. After all, something had to come and go from here with Klaang aboard. He certainly hadn’t popped in out of thin air, so there had to be a trail.

They were ushered through a tubular construction with lots of bridges into a central control area with windows on every side, couched by banks of controls and broken every few seconds by the sweep of a beacon from the runways. The dockmaster himself was a huge burly alien preoccupied with traffic.

“Pardon us,” Buffy began, hoping the translator didn’t get it wrong. “I’m Commander Buffy Summers of the Starfleet vessel Enterprise.”

“Who? What planet is that?”

“Starfleet is not a planet,” Dawn said. “It’s an organization. The planet is Earth.”

“Good for you. The visitor’s center is on Quintash Plaza.”

“Thanks very much,” Buffy said. “Before we go, would you answer a few questions for us?”

“There’s a manual on the wall in the corridor. Read it,” the alien rumbled. “Next time, approach from the mountains. Less crosswind.”

“Thank you again ... I’d like to know whether a Klingon vessel of any kind came through here about five or six of your days ago.”

“Five or six days? Do you realize how much traffic we process in a single day?”

“You must keep records,” Buffy suggested, glancing at Dawn as if asking her sister what she sensed. “This was a one-man Klingon scoutship.”

“What species are you?”

“Human,” Dawn said. “We’re called humans.”

As if congratulating her, an alarm went off and lights flashed on the dockmaster’s console. The dockmaster hammered on what might have been a keyboard, then checked a monitor.

“Elkan nine, raise your approach vector by point two radiants!”

When the alarm stopped, the dockmaster hammered something new into the keyboard and the monitor changed.

“It was seven days ago. A K’toch-class vessel.”

“Does it say who he was here to see?” Buffy wondered.

“What it says is that he arrived at docking port six and was given a level one biohazard clearance.”

“You don’t seem very interested in what people do here,” Buffy said.

“Our visitors value their privacy,” the dockmaster said, even though he had just handed over information Klaang probably never wanted known. “It wouldn’t be very tusoropko tuproya plo business they’re in.”

Buffy flinched at the sudden change in sounds and looked at her sister, who busily adjusted the communicator/translator.

“It’s all right,” she said. “Rigelian uses a pronominal base. The translator’s just reprocessing the syntax.”

Buffy nodded and then looked back at the dockmaster. “Do you have any records of a Suliban vessel coming in around the same time?”

“Suliban? I don’t know that word. Your device must still be malfunctioning.”

The dockmaster went back to his work, turning his idea of a shoulder to the newcomers.

Buffy motioned to Dawn, muttered a thank you to the dockmaster and then led the way out into the corridor.

“He’s lying,” Dawn told Buffy immediately.

“I know,” Buffy said. “I didn’t need to be an empath to decipher that. Anyways he has no reason to tell us anything. He’s probably more scared of whoever wants him to keep silent.”

“Why would he be?”

“You remember Worf,” Buffy said. “And you yourself saw the Suliban.”

“I get what you’re saying,” Dawn agreed. “One is a warrior race and the other has gone through bioengineering. Who knows besides their chameleon abilities what traits they might have?”

“Now,” Buffy said, “if I read the dockmaster correctly, somebody else will know we’re here looking for Klaang. Let’s go down to the Plaza and appear obvious, shall we?”

Dawn grinned and nodded.

0 – 0 – 0 – 0 – 0

The main downtown area was an ancient, towering, weatherworn complex that seemed to have been constructed over several decades. Architectural styles ran the gamut here, as did the age of the buildings. In some cases, new structures were built right on top of old ones, without bothering to demolish.

Haze hung in the air, perforated by shafts of artificial light. Myriad species went about their private business, moving in and out of concealed and sometimes locked trading alcoves. Some were in uniform, others in indistinct robes or layered with jewelry. Many carried weapons.

The flavor of the old West was palpable.

“This place reminds me of an old movie,” Buffy commented, glancing at a mammoth carpet-haired beast of burden with legs like tree stumps and the smell of a pig farm.

Alien insects came to investigate them—large insects the size of birds on Earth. They hovered, and one perched on Dawn’s head for a moment, but became quickly disinterested.

“They don’t seem harmful,” Buffy said.

Dawn rolled her eyes. “Neither did Spike, but before he was chipped …”

“Right,” Buffy said. “Of course being Millennial may make something in us un appetizing to them, too. This must be the Plaza.” She led the way to a vast, cavernous thoroughfare of bridgelike walkways that crisscrossed each other well into the sky and for miles in three directions from where they stood.

“T’Pol to First Officer Summers.”

Buffy opened up her communicator and responded almost immediately. “Go ahead.”

“Central Security claims to have no record of Klaang. But they told me about an enclave on level nineteen where Klingons have been known to go. Something about live food.”

“Where on level nineteen?” Buffy asked.

“The easternmost subsection. By the geothermal shafts.”

“I’ll meet you there as soon as I can. Summers out,” Buffy responded as she put away her communicator.

She turned and led Dawn through the trade complex. Deep grinding noises from the power generators far below echoed through damp floors that creaked under their feet.

“Isn’t an ‘enclave’ supposed to have people?” Dawn wondered.

“‘Enclave’ can mean a lot of things,” Buffy said as she kept her eyes peeled and her Slayer senses at full alert. The place looked empty, but that also could mean a lot of things.

“T’Pol said something about ‘live’ food,” Dawn said. “I don’t see any restaurants. Of course by what we know of Klingons that is not necessarily a bad thing, since their natural warriors that must mean they love to hunt.”

Buffy suddenly drew up short instead as a flicker of movement caught her eye in the industrial distance. Klingons!

“Excuse me!” she shouted. “Hello! Excuse me!”

The Klingons moved away from them.

“Dawn?” Buffy said as she looked at her sister.

Dawn nodded, then shouted, “Ha’quj jeg!”

But there was only silence. The movement stopped. The shadows sagged back to stillness.

“They looked Klingon to me,” Dawn said.

Buffy nodded in agreement. “Summers to T’Pol.” After a moment, when no answer came, she repeated, “T’Pol, come in.” Anxiety rose as no answer came. She looked to Dawn as she drew her plasma pistol. She quietly pointed at Dawn and then herself.

Dawn nodded in understanding. She placed a hand on Buffy’s back as she drew power from her sister.

They moved into the deep purpose shadows along the path leading to where the Klingons had disappeared. Above, a spiderweb of age-old metal drums, bridges, archways, and tubes threaded the darkness. Steam billowed from the geothermal ducts, obscuring every step before they took it.

There was someone here.

“I sense there is someone here, watching us,” Dawn whispered.

They passed too close to a geothermal duct just as it blew its top. A mushroom of gray-white steam burped from the depths and separated Buffy from Dawn for a critical instant.

Buffy glanced around, but she couldn’t find her sister in the steam.

A piece of a shadow burst toward Buffy—Dawn’s hand flashed in the cloud and she screamed, only steps from Buffy, but though she reached out, Dawn slipped away.

Buffy whirled full about and took aim. “Dawn, fire, show me where you are.”

Just then she was attacked from two sides by a now-familiar dappled team who moved like insects. Suliban! Her pistol flew from her hand at a single blow. She smiled at the Suliban as she lashed out with every ounce of Slayer strength she had and landed a solid strike on a surface that collapsed and seconds turned into punches. One of the attackers fell back.

The other, though, made use of his partner as a distraction. Buffy spun to keep fighting, but her arms were yanked behind her so violently that she gasped with pain and arched her back. In the steam, Dawn cried out again.

While neither of them could die, they could still feel pain, and Buffy was sure that was Dawn was feeling now pain. Maybe even so much pain that it blocked out the weight of the emotions from the beings around them.

Buffy kicked out, but failed to connect. Her hip twisted. A shot of pain rushed up her side. Her attackers took the advantage. With a single gasp of protest, Buffy was dragged into the dark depths as if swallowed by a giant burrowing animal.

0 – 0 – 0 – 0 – 0

A STEAMY MAZE ... vertical, diagonal, horizontal tubes, bridges ...

Buffy strained to see Dawn, who was behind her. They were being pushed right along at a daunting pace. One of the two Suliban who pushed them along had Buffy’s plasma pistol.

Sweat drained down their faces. The surroundings were getting hotter and steamier, though the Suliban didn’t seem affected at all—

What was that? An energy field?

Buffy blinked as a fizzing light half blinded her. She fought to adjust.

T’Pol! And Trip—in a box of some kind, with a force field locking them in.

The Suliban operatives yanked them to a stop. One of the Suliban worked a handheld device that caused the energy field to snap down. Then that same Suliban reached for Dawn and pulled her inside the chamber and left her with T’Pol and Tucker,

Buffy noticed that these two weren’t dressed the same as the two who had infiltrated the Enterprise. Of course, that didn’t mean they weren’t the same two.

The Suliban stepped out and raised the electrical shield again.

From inside, Tucker stepped forward toward Buffy, but there was no hope to break through the force field. T’Pol gave her no such concern. Instead, she seemed to be saying with her eyes I told you so.

Buffy let herself be led away without further struggle, she needed to know what she was up against, and she needed information. The Suliban pulled her down a conduit to some steps, then down the steps. She was drawn through three locked doors and a small hatch. Thoroughly disoriented by the time they stopped, she found herself in a chamber with beds, computers, piles of clothing, tables and chairs, and clutter.

Buffy looked around critically and got an idea about this place. It reminded her of the Initiative. The two Suliban finally let her have her arms back. Without a word or gesture, they turned and left her alone in this chamber—which probably meant there was no easy way out. Judging from the way they came in, she might be lost down here for weeks before she found her way to the surface.

“You’re looking for Klaang,” a female voice said in perfect English. “Why?”

Buffy turned, looked. Neither of the Suliban had come back or spoken. Who had?

“Who are you?” Buffy wondered.

The shadows behind a stack of boxes shifted. A woman stepped out. Strikingly lovely and definitely human, the woman strode toward Buffy, studying the Slayer as she came.

“My name is Sarin. Tell me about the people who took Klaang off your ship.”

“I was hoping you could tell me,” Buffy reversed. “They looked a lot like your friends outside.”

She stepped toward him. “Where were you taking him?”

“How come you don’t look like your friends?” Buffy wondered.

She was uncomfortably close now. “Would you prefer I did?” she asked in a sultry tone.

“What I’d prefer,” Buffy said, “is that you give me Klaang back.”

“So you could take him where?”

“Home,” Buffy said. “We were just taking him home.”

Sarin was now inches away. Less. She seemed to be gauging Buffy. Buffy was returning the favor.

“You’d better be careful,” Buffy murmured. “I may not be bigger, but I’ve dealt with things a lot stronger than you.”

Sarin moved until they were very close and her breath brushed Buffy’s cheek. “If you’re thinking of harming me, Millennial, I’d advise against it.”

Buffy stopped. “Millennial?”

“Did you think you were the only one chosen to live for a thousand years?”

“I wasn’t chosen,” Buffy said. “My sister was, she chose me to accompany her through that lifetime. I will simply live for a thousand years while she has the gifts.”

“I see,” Sarin responded with a nod. “So why were you taking Klaang home?”

“Nothing going,” Buffy responded. “Unless you tell me some things …”

Sarin pressed her lips to Buffy’s, forcefully and with purpose. Buffy coolly accepted what was happening and bothered to relax enough that Sarin might get discouraged sooner.

Sarin stepped back rather abruptly. Her face began to melt. A moment later, she was Suliban.

“I take it your Millennial gift has to come from close contact,” Buffy said.

“You would be correct,” Sarin replied.

“You’re Suliban,” Buffy said, giving Sarin a pretense of the shock she was probably going for.

“I was a member of the Cabal,” Sarin said, “but not anymore. The price of evolution is too high.”

“Evolution?”

Carefully, she moved away, no longer meeting his eyes. “Some of my people are so anxious to ‘improve’ themselves that they’ve lost perspective.”

“Since you are Millennial,” Buffy said, “you know I’m not lying to you. Now what?”

“Klaang was carrying a message to his people.”

“How do you know that?”

“I gave it to him.”

“What kind of message?”

“The Suliban have been staging attacks within the Klingon Empire,” Sarin told Buffy. “Making it appear that one faction is attacking another. Klaang was bringing proof of this to his High Council. Without that proof, the Empire could be thrown into chaos.”

“Why would the Suliban want that?” Buffy wondered.

“The Cabal doesn’t make decisions on its own,” Sarin went on, more anxious to tell him things. “They’re simply soldiers fighting a temporal cold war.”

“You mean they’re taking orders from the future?” Buffy asked as Sarin looked at her surprised. “My sister and I met a group from the future, during Earth’s first contact with Vulcan, intending to preserve their timeline.”

“You are correct again,” Sarin replied.

Sarin turned looked to Buffy, her face firm with conviction. “We can help you find Klaang,” she said quickly. “But we don’t have a starship. You’ll have to take us with you!”

A blinding flash of blue light discharged between them. A computer station at Buffy’s elbow exploded into shards and drove her sideways. She reached for Sarin and pulled her out of the blast area.

Another weapon blast struck even closer. Two Suliban skittered across the ceiling, firing weapons at them!

It didn’t take a genius to understand that the secret base had been breached and these weren’t the same two Suliban who had brought Buffy here.

Sarin’s Suliban came streaking in from a doorway, firing as they ran, but the other Suliban seemed to have physical advantages. They skimmed the walls and ceiling like insects.

All hell broke loose. Buffy dragged Sarin toward the way they’d come in, assuming she would have the sense to lead her out through those tubes—

“Get us out!” Buffy ordered. “Dawn, can protect us.”

In fact, she had a shortcut. Five seconds later, they were out in the main access level, being sprayed by geothermals and burned by the fritzing electrical screen that blocked off the Enterprise landing party. Behind them, the battle raged—Suliban against Suliban.

One of Sarin’s operatives fell dead just inches behind Buffy, while the other exchanged handweapon fire with the two attackers. Sarin raised a weapon now that Buffy hadn’t even known she possessed, and began returning fire, blocking blast after blast that might’ve taken Buffy’s head off.

Sarin’s other operative followed them out, rushing frantically along a bridge, firing as he went. He blasted one of the two attackers, but was caught in crossfire and killed by the second invader.

That left Buffy and Sarin on their own. “We have to get that energy field down,” Buffy said. “Once it is down, Dawn can use her Millennial gifts to help protect us.”

The Suliban attacker drove Buffy and Sarin into hiding with his wild firing, then opened on the force field with the Enterprise crewmen behind it. They dove for cover, but there wasn’t any. All they could do was crouch with each other as the field disrupted in blinding displays of free energy.

At Buffy’s side, Sarin took the initiative and stood clear. She fired openly at the attacker’s body and blew him off his feet. With that window of opportunity, she rushed to the control panel of the force field and worked it with some kind of code.

The field fell! The crew flooded out, Dawn first with her hand on Tucker’s chest. She held out her arm and she fired a blast of electrical energy at the attacking Suliban.

Sarin yanked open a panel that turned out to be a locker. She started handing T’Pol, Buffy and Tucker their plasma pistols!

“Where is your vessel?” Sarin asked.

“On the roof! Docking port three!”

Dawn spotted two more Suliban, defying gravity, crawling along the pipe! She fired another electrical blast, temporarily halting their advance.

“This way!” Sarin called. She led them in a completely confusing direction, one of the Suliban dropped and landed only a pace from Buffy and Dawn.

Buffy lashed out, and the Suliban sprang out of reach and out of sight with a heightened agility that startled even Sarin.

But here were two more Suliban—dressed like Sarin’s associates and firing at the other Suliban!

Flashes of weapons fire illuminated the distance. The Starfleet team plowed forward after Sarin, ducking and running, navigating the wild jungle of pipes and buttresses.

Sarin reached a massive vertical tube, hit a control. A large pipe opened before them. Inside was a circular platform a few feet above the deck. Buffy hustled Tucker and T’Pol into the hole. Then she reached for Dawn.

Weapons fire streaked in from hundreds of feet away.

“Dawn!” Buffy called, and shoved her sister onto the platform, then piled in after her. Under them, the platform began to rumble and shift with the rush of thermal energy. Sarin was doing something with a control box. Was this an elevator?

Sarin moved toward the platform. She reached out to climb aboard. A blast struck her square in the back.

A Suliban stood across the area, his weapon trained on her. He fired again just as his eyes met Buffy’s.

Sarin fell hard. The points of impact on her back glowed and sizzled as they burned their way through her writhing body.

Buffy launched off the platform, followed by Dawn. Dawn, with her hand firmly planted on the console that Sarin had been using, provided covering fire and drove the Suliban back while Buffy knelt at Sarin’s side.

The Suliban took cover behind an outcropping of twisted pipes, but he was more persistent than the others and didn’t run.

Beneath Buffy’s hands, the female Suliban was dying.

“Find Klaang,” Sarin murmured raggedly.

Mercifully, she lost consciousness as the wounds in her body continued to glow, burn, and grow, eating her from the inside out.

“Dawn!” Buffy bolted to his feet. She hoped it would be quick for Sarin. She could give her no more now.

Buffy motioned for her sister, and together they jumped back onto the trembling platform. She slid the hatch shut.

The moment she did that, the platform blasted upward through the shaft, driving them to their knees, propelled by a rolling pillar of steam.

In seconds the hot steam was blown away by an arctic blast. Archer forced his eyes open and saw snow blanketing the landing dock. They’d made it!

The platform shot up and stopped a full two feet over the dock. The Starfleet team was thrown into a pile, but alive. Steam blasted out in all directions under them, billowing into the frozen air.

“Let’s go!” Buffy called over the whine of wind and blowing ice.

“Where’s the pod?” Dawn called.

“Over here!” Tucker waved and pointed.

T’Pol, though, called louder over the wind and pointed in a different direction. “No, this way!”

Buffy weighed the two options, then picked T’Pol’s direction. She was the only one who had ever been here before. She made the bet and pointed. “Come on!”

As the four of them headed toward an obscured shape with two lights that might indeed be the shuttle, Buffy brought the communicator up, flipping it as she ran. “Lieutenant Reed, this is Summers! Come in!”

“zzzzzzkkkkkggggaaazzzk.”

“We’re up on the roof! You need to get up here as quickly as possible! Where are you? Emergency evacuation! Reed!”

The communicator buzzed frantically.

Suliban soldiers appeared only seconds after they skidded onto the frozen deck.

Time seemed to crawl when a blast rocketed past him.

The wind began to clear. Blowing snow flattened into a sea, and the docking platform opened before them—empty! The obscured shape had been nothing but an approach shield!

“Like I said,” Tucker shouted, “it’s over there!”

Another blast of weapons fire sliced the air.

“Dawn!” Buffy yelled and felt her sister place her hand on her chest.

They kept searching for the shuttle, this time following Tucker through the storm of snow and weapons fire, firing all the way. Dawn fired energy across the platform toward the place where the Suliban shots were coming from.

A darkened form, sheeted and blistered with ice, suddenly flashed with blue energy before them. The shuttlepod! The Suliban weapons fire lit up the skin of the pod and gave the Starfleet team a clear beacon to safety.

T’Pol circled around Buffy and Dawn and pounded on the shuttle window. Why was she doing that?

The emergency hatch began to crack open, popped out a few inches, and swung wider. Air gushed with equalization and temperature change.

The Suliban were closing in.

Reed pulled T’Pol in and then Tucker. Dawn placed moved her hand Buffy’s chest to the side of the shuttlepod and with her free hand she pushed her sister toward Reed. Reed pulled Buffy inside. “Dawn,” he said, “come on.”

Dawn fired one last show of energy and then dove for Reed who pulled her inside.

“The starboard thruster’s down!” Mayweather spat.

“Ignore it.” Buffy said. “Take us up. And open a channel. Summers to Enterprise, we'll be docking in a few minutes."

"Did you find anything out?" Archer asked over the comm.

"Not much," Buffy replied. "Just to be on the safe side, have Dr. Phlox meet us in decon.”

“Acknowledged. Is someone wounded?”

"Not that I know of," Buffy replied. "But its better safe than sorry."


	13. Red Alert

Other than each of the away team having a protocystian spore, they were fine and once they were released Buffy, T’Pol and Tucker met Archer in his ready room and informed him on the mission.

He told them about detecting the Suliban ship that left just after they had lifted off the surface.

And so T’Pol and Tucker went to work, they modified the sensors to detect the Suliban’s plasma decay rate.

“Buffy?” Archer said later in his ready room. “Did you find out anything about her?”

“Being who Dawn and I are we have a pretty high clearance as you know, she’s clean and normal right up until she gets the scholarship that put her in Soval’s office. Then, her records start getting real terse and kind of vague. I suspect it could just be Soval’s logging style as the details are never very important to him. Of course it could be a masking technique similar to the one he used when mine and Dawn’s records became classified.”

“Do you think she’s a spy?” he asked.

“No,” Buffy replied. “There is no reason for that. Of course she’s not going lie to Soval either. So she might be a spy unwittingly. There is something else, something unusual. Dawn and I found logs of several messages going back and forth between Soval and Admiral Forrest just before she was assigned.”

Archer narrowed his eyes in thought. “I didn’t think Soval and Forrest had that much to say to each other.”

“Neither did I,” Buffy said. “In fact to my knowledge Dawn and I are the only human’s Soval is even friendly with at all. But it does make you wonder what’s going on.”

“Do you think you could find out?” Archer wondered.

“Possible,” Buffy said, “given time. But it’s possible that T’Pol’s a guinea pig. To see if maybe we can work together. Or she could be a plant after all, but not for what we think.”

“For what then?”

“To keep an eye on me and Dawn,” Buffy said. “Soval did not want us leaving Earth, not on an Earth vessel. When Dawn told him she wanted to be on this mission. He objected and suggested a Vulcan ship.”

“That is interesting,” Archer replied.

“T’Pol to Archer, permission to go to warp four point five. The Suliban ship is pulling away from us.”

“Granted,” Archer replied. “Archer to Engineering. We’re going to go to warp four point five.”

“Aye sir,” Tucker replied. “I’ll keep an eye on the engines.”

“It’s possible there’s something about time travel we don’t understand,” Archer suggested suddenly as he looked back to Buffy.

“I’d say the odds for that are good,” Buffy responded. “Only Dawn and I have any familiarity with time travel because of our past experiences and we like you were on the receiving end.”

“So it’s likely somebody more advanced than we are,” Archer contemplated,

“Trying to change the past like the Borg?” Buffy wondered. “It’s possible.”

“I think we agree it’s dangerous for these beings from the future to help the Suliban, but it’s not so different from an advanced race like the Vulcans coming and helping Earth. If it’s so risky, why are they helping us at all? They didn’t help the Klingons, did they?”

“That’s a good question,” Buffy said. “And I have no idea on that. I look at what the Borg tried to do. And I think there are those like them out there that want to change our history so that we aren’t there for some reason or another to do something in the future.”

“A butterfly flaps its wings in Africa,” Archer murmured, “and there’s a typhoon in China the next spring. This idea that anyone can engineer the future by screwing up the past—”

“I know,” Buffy said with a sigh. “If the Borg had succeeded who knows what we would be doing right now, because they changed the timeline.”

“But those Borg had to have been reacting to something, right?” Archer questioned.

“Very possibly,” Buffy said. “Maybe we will be at war with them and they lost. Dawn and I won’t know for two hundred more years.”

“So what about these people from the future that are helping the Sulibans? What are they reacting too?”

“I don’t know,” Buffy responded. “But I will tell ya this; I wish I could talk to them for five minutes.”

The ship shuddered under them suddenly, cutting off the conversation.

They looked at the window. The stars were changing.

The ship was falling out of warp!

“Archer to T’Pol. Report!”

“You’re needed on the bridge, Captain,” came T’Pol’s response.

Archer and Buffy stepped out of his ready room and onto the bridge.

Archer settled into his command chair as T’Pol stepped out of it, and eyed the big orange mass on the viewscreen—a gargantuan planet of mostly gravity and dust holding each other together on a vast scale.

“From the looks of it, a class six or seven,” he muttered.

“Class seven,” T’Pol confirmed. “The Suliban vessel dropped to impulse a few hours ago and altered course. Their new heading took them through its outer radiation belt.”

“We’ve lost them?” Buffy asked.

Reluctantly, T’Pol nodded.

“Move us in closer,” Archer said

Mayweather glanced at Archer, then worked to obey that order. Archer pushed out of his chair and paced as Buffy sat in his chair.

The ship moved closer toward the radiation belt of the orange gas giant. The planet loomed large and imposing on their screens, causing warnings to go off on several stations, but not the right ones.

“Anything?” Buffy asked.

“The radiation’s dissipating their warp trail,” Reed reported. “I’m only picking up fragments.”

Archer gave T’Pol his hunting-eagle glare. “You finished helping us?” he challenged.

She went to Reed’s station and eyed the graphics, then hit a control. One simple click.

On the main screen, an enhanced picture of the giant appeared, this time with a fragmented ion trail faintly traced in colors, being broken up by the winds. “Lieutenant,” she said, “run a spectral analysis of the fragments.”

Reed hit a series of controls in specific order. On the graphic, a sequence of numbers appeared near each fragment, all different.

“There’s too much distortion,” Reed complained. “The decay rates don’t even match.”

“Calculate the trajectory of each fragment.”

He looked a bit dubious, and glanced at Buffy and Archer, both of whom nodded.

“You heard her,” Archer said.

Reed clearly hadn’t a clue what she was looking for, but he did as he was bidden.

T’Pol, while Reed worked, turned and met first Buffy’s eyes and then Archer’. For the first time the three of them seemed to be thinking the same thing.

The graphic now displayed telemetry for each fragment. Archer nodded at T’Pol, who moved to another station and began doing the work for herself.

“Recalibrate the sensor array,” Archer authorized. “Narrowband, short to midrange.”

“Measure the particle density of the thermosphere,” T’Pol added.

Buffy looked at T’Pol. “Those fragments weren’t from the Suliban ship.”

T’Pol confirmed, “They were from fourteen ... and all within the last six hours. I believe we’ve found what we’re looking for.”

Archer dropped a hand on Reed’s shoulder. “How are your targeting scanners?”

“Aligned and ready, sir!”

“Bring weapons on-line and polarize the hull plating.”

The crew jumped to action all over the bridge. That was no by-the-book order!

“Lay in a sixty degree vector,” Archer said calmly. “We’re going in.”

The Enterprise moved through disruptions of gaseous energy and storms the size of whole planets. Her running lights cut through the dense layers, but it was still strangely similar to that ice cyclone on Rigel Ten.

“Sensor resolution’s falling off at about twelve kilometers ...” Hoshi said.

Archer leaned forward. “Travis?”

Mayweather worked feverishly. “I’m okay, Captain.”

The ship trembled and rolled—full swings her entire beam-width from side to side. Even her massive power was nothing against the natural monstrosity of a gas giant.

T’Pol worked almost anxiously at her console. “Our situation should improve. We’re about to break through the cyclohexane layer.”

The orange color gave way to an even denser layer of roiling blue liquid. The blue color, normally peaceful, seemed even angrier than the outer atmosphere, and more eerie. It was also more solid, slamming the bow every few seconds with powerful strikes.

“I wouldn’t exactly call this an improvement,” Dawn commented from her engineering console.

“Liquid phosphorescence,” T’Pol explained. “I wouldn’t have expected that beneath a layer of cyclohexane.”

The ship rocked sideways again, then took a hard drop forward.

Hoshi hunched her shoulders and hung on until her knuckles turned white. “You might think about recommending seat belts when we get home.”

“It’s just a little bad weather,” Archer assured.

The roiling on the main screen thinned and changed again.

The console near Hoshi suddenly cried out—peep peep peep peep!

“We’ve got sensors!” she called at the same pitch.

“Level off,” Archer ordered. “Go to long-range scan.”

“I’m detecting two vessels,” T’Pol reported, “bearing one-one-nine mark 7.”

“On screen,” Buffy ordered.

Hoshi worked her board. The viewscreen changed to show two Suliban ships moving away in the distance.

“Impulse and warp engines,” Reed reported.

“What kind of weapons?” Archer asked.

“We’re too far away.”

“Sir,” Mayweather broke in, “I’m picking up something at three-forty-two mark 12 ... and it’s a lot bigger!”

The viewscreen shifted as Hoshi worked faster.

“All sensors,” Archer instructed T’Pol. “Get whatever you can!”

Before them on the changing screen, a huge complex came into focus. Was it a ship? Or buildings?

“Magnify,” Buffy said.

The screen zeroed in closer. The complex was indeed some kind of moving object, made of hundreds of Suliban ships interlocked to form a massive spiraled space station. A few individual cell ships engaged and disengaged from the mother complex.

“Biosigns?” Archer asked.

“Over three thousand,” Hoshi reported, “but I can’t isolate a Klingon, if there is one—”

A jolt rammed the body of the ship.

Buffy quickly moved to Reed’s console and looked over his shoulder. “A particle weapon, she said.”

Hit again!

“Bridge!” a call came in from Trip Tucker. “We’re taking damage down here! What’s going on?”

“Just a little trouble with the bad guys,” Archer assured.

“I suggest returning to the phosphorous layer,” T’Pol called over the boom of the next hit.

“Take us up,” Archer obliged.

The ship rapidly ascended, leaving the attacking cell ships behind with admirable grace. The Suliban cells quickly homed toward the main complex.

Prodding, Archer asked a general question to any who wanted to contribute. “What’ve you got?”

“It appears,” T’Pol began, “to be an aggregate structure, comprised of hundreds of vessels. They’re held in place by an interlocking system of magnetic seals.”

“There!” Hoshi yelped. “Right there!”

Biodata tumbled across the main screen over a small section of the Suliban aggregate.

“These bioreadings are not Suliban!” Buffy said as she looked up at the main screen.

T’Pol looked at first Buffy and then Hoshi. “We can’t be certain they’re Klingon,” she warned.

“Even if it is Klaang,” Archer accepted, “we’d have a tough time getting him off of there.”

Reed turned in his chair and broached a touchy subject. “We could always try the transporting device...”

“No,” Buffy quietly said.

“We’ve risked too much to bring him back inside out,” Archer added. “Would the grappler work in a liquid atmosphere?”

“I believe so ...” Reed replied.

“Bring it on-line. One more time, Mr. Mayweather. Take us down to proximity range.”

“Proximity range, sir.”

Once again the ship descended into the smooth lower atmosphere, the clear layer that seemed so welcoming, yet held the primary threat.

“Make it aggressive,” Archer said. “Don’t hold back.”

“Understood, sir,” Mayweather agreed. “I won’t.”

The ship hummed with power, and soared like a giant albatross on an arctic crest.

“Suliban ships in patrol formation, sir,” Reed instantly reported. “They’ve seen us!”

“Let’s give them a closer look, Mr. Mayweather.”

“Aye, sir!”

“Mr. Reed, open fire,” Buffy ordered.

“Oh, thank you, sir, so much.”

“Ready that grappling system,” Archer ordered.

“It shall indeed be ready, sir.”

The ship took a compressive dive into the clear, burst out, and trumpeted her presence in the sky.

Rapid-blast torpedoes of compressed energy made a luminous announcement.

The artillery shells spoke out across the giant’s sky-bound seas and scattered through the Suliban patrol. The Suliban returned fire, but also broke formation. Enterprise absorbed a tremendous hit.

“The ventral plating’s down!” Reed called over the noise. “I’m having trouble getting a weapons lock! These scanners weren’t designed for a liquid atmosphere!” Again the ship was hit, driving him to comment, “Though apparently theirs were ...”

“Go to manual targeting if you have to,” Buffy told him.

A hard shake caused the console next to Hoshi to blow a plume of sparks. She shrieked and leapt back.

“Hold your position, Travis,” Archer said calmly.

“The lead ship’s closing,” Reed reported. “Seven thousand meters ... six thousand ...”

“We should ascend!” T’Pol called.

“Hold your position!” Archer repeated.

Reed glanced at Buffy and then Archer. “One thousand meters. Forward plating’s off-line!”

“Now, Mr. Reed!” Buffy ordered.

One of the cell ships veered almost directly to the star-ship’s bow. Reed struck his controls. Two grappling devices shot from ports on the launch bay arm, trailing thin cables. The grapplers struck the Suliban ship and magnetically adhered to its hull.

“He’s ejecting!” Hoshi called, and pointed.

A cockpit hatch sprang open on the Suliban cell. The pilot was gone in a blast of vapor and disappeared through the layer below.

“That was a stupid move, unless he’s suicidal,” Dawn said.

“Back up, Travis,” Archer ordered.

“Rising, sir.”

The ship moved back up toward the turbulent layers, now trailing its prey on a silken cord, drawing it closer and closer to the hangar bay.

Reed eyed his station and uttered, “Hello ... their ship is in the launch bay, sir.”

Fifteen minutes later, Archer, Buffy, Dawn and Mayweather crowded around a table graphic in the situation room off the bridge. The table showed graphics of the cell ship, all different angles of the exterior, engine schematics, flight controls ... they tried to study these while the starship trembled and shook around them, battling the turbulence, but she was built to do that, like ships immemorial before her.

“All right, what’s this?” Mayweather was pointing at something.

“The pitch control,” Buffy said.

“No,” Mayweather argued. “That’s the pitch control. This is the guidance system.”

“Pitch control ... guidance system ... I got it.”

“The docking interface,” Mayweather went on. “How do you deploy it?”

Archer hunched over the graphics. “Looks like you release the inertial clamps here, here, and here, then initialize the coaxial ports.”

“Good. Where’s the auxiliary throttle?”

“Mmmm—” Buffy squinted. “It’s not this one ...”

Mayweather straightened up then. “With all due respect to Commander Summers, I’m pretty sure I could fly this thing, sir.”

“I don’t doubt it,” Archer agreed. “But I need you here.”

“Captain?” T’Pol’s voice thrummed under a low-frequency boooom that suddenly grew louder and erupted in a hard bam.

They turned.

“That charge contained a proximity sweep,” she said from her post. “If we remain here, they’re going to locate us.”

Archer nodded and turned to Mayweather. “You’re gonna have to speed this up a little, Travis.”

“How complicated can it be?” Buffy wondered. “Up, down, forward, reverse! We’ll figure it out.”

Booooom! Boooooom!

“Inverted depth charges, Captain!” T’Pol called.

Archer, Buffy, Dawn and Mayweather stepped out of the situation room, and T’Pol met Buffy and Archer in the middle of the bridge. “We’ll be back before you know it. Have Mayweather plot a course for Qo’noS.”

“There’s a Vulcan ship less than two days away,” T’Pol offered. “It’s illogical to attempt this alone.”

“I was beginning to think you understood why we have to do this alone,” Dawn said.

She paused. “The three of you could both be killed.”

Archer looked up, rather sharply. “Am I sensing concern? Last time I checked, that was considered an emotion.”

As soon as he said it, he regretted his cocky accusation.

T’Pol’s expression turned blank again. “If anything happens to the three of you, especially Commander Summers and Commander Summers, the Vulcan High Council will hold me responsible.”

Buffy, Dawn and Archer smiled at her, offering a little understanding. Then Reed approached with two silver equipment cases, and their attention went there. “You’re finished?” Buffy asked.

Reed flipped the lid on one case to reveal a rectangular device. “It should reverse the polarity of any maglock within a hundred meters. Once you’ve set the sequence, you’ll have five seconds. One more thing.” He flipped open the second case and pulled out two Starfleet-colored hand weapons with pistol grips and handed them both to Archer.

“Ah—our new weapons?” Archer asked.

“They’re called ‘phase pistols,’ ” Reed introduced. “They have two settings. Stun and kill. It would be best not to confuse them.”

Another low boom shook the vessel under them, followed by a startling jolt that rocked them back to the moment.

To T’Pol he said, almost with delight, “The ship is yours! Buffy, Dawn, let’s go!”


	14. Suliban

Chapter 13: Suliban

CRAMPED, TREMBLING, COLD, and admittedly out of their element, Archer, Buffy and Dawn hunkered elbow to elbow inside the Suliban cell ship as it blew free of the Enterprise and shot out into the swirling atmospheric sea.

The ship raced forward, fighting its own power and the turbulence at the same time.

Archer flinched when a light came on. “What’s that?”

“Travis said not to worry about that panel,” Buffy replied glancing at the indicated light.

“That’s reassuring ...” Dawn muttered.

They were thrown against each other when the cell hit an atmospheric pocket. Queasy and bloodless, Archer fought to keep steady himself. “They sure didn’t build these things for comfort.”

“Wait till we get the Klingon in here with us,” Dawn remarked.

“If I’m reading this right, we should be about twenty kilometers from Enterprise,” Buffy said.

“Drop the pitch thirty degrees,” Archer ordered.

“Look! The Enterprise!” Dawn said.

For just an instant, the visibility cleared, just enough to show a portion of the starship above them taking a hard whack from a luminous weapon stream.

“They’re taking a lot of bad fire,” Archer mentioned. “I should’ve given her permission for evasive maneuvers. If they change position, the Suliban’ll have to look for them all over again.”

“If they move, we might never find them again,” Buffy reminded. “She’ll probably just ride it out.”

“That’s what I’m counting on.”

Dawn glanced at Archer. “You seem to be changing your tune with how Vulcans have treated us for the last century.”

“I think it’s changing some,” Archer agreed. “After a whole lifetime of watching Vulcans generalize about humans, it seems all three of us are doing the same thing about them. All three of us just took it out on her.”

Dawn thought about it and nodded. “Your right,” she said as Buffy nodded in agreement.

“Look at this,” Buffy said, pointing at the adjusting screens. “I think we’re there.”

“Bringing the docking interface on-line,” Dawn said as she touched a button and the interface hummed to life. The cell ship rattled around them.

“Coaxial ports,” Archer ordered.

Another control twanged. A quick, hissing sound blew some kind of ballast or docking mechanisms somewhere on the skin of the cell ship. Buffy embraced the steering mechanism and began to ease the ship downward. Through the ports, they could see blue phosphorous clouds begin to thin out. A moment later, they broke into clear space.

“Where is it?” Buffy wondered. “It was right there!”

Dawn studied the graphic. “Bank starboard ninety degrees.”

Buffy heaved the controller over. The ship banked sharply, taking their stomachs with it.

A dizzying view of the Suliban complex rose directly below them.

“That’s the upper support radius,” Archer said. “Drop down right below it. Start a counterclockwise sweep.”

The cell ship descended further, down past numerous levels of the aggregate. Other cell ships, most larger, engaged and disengaged from the huge structure for reasons of their own.

“A little more ... little more ... almost there ...” Buffy said as she guided the cell ship to a docking port.

Chhhh-UNK.

Contact. The cell jolted slightly. A series of whirring mechanical sounds signaled that the docking ports were locking into place. They knew those sounds. Everybody who flew knew those sounds.

Abruptly, the hatch opened—on its own!

Archer flinched and put his hands on Buffy and Dawn’s arms. Before them was a long, dimly lit corridor, completely unoccupied. Their own private entrance.

Dawn looked at her sister and Archer. “Well?”

Archer pulled out his phase pistol. “Why not?” he said as Buffy did the same.

They moved quickly through the corridor. Archer kept eyeing the sensor scanner he held in his other hand. They rounded a corner, and came face to face with a—a face!

Caught by surprise, the Suliban soldier clutched for his own side arm, before a bolt of energy hit him first. Archer and Buffy looked to see Dawn one hand outstretched the other planted on a nearby console.

“I regulated the energy,” Dawn said. “He should be out for a while, but not dead.”

And they kept moving.

Klingon life-signs. A whole new quiver for an Earth sensor system.

However, being a machine, the sensor didn’t care one way or the other and led them dutifully to the source.

Archer went through the door first, with Buffy and Dawn right behind him. And there was their big buddy, restrained in an elaborate chair-like thing, with tubes and devices attached to his body. He was alive, but semiconscious.

Archer gestured. Dawn immediately went to the Klingon and started unstrapping him. The Klingon stared, but didn’t fight or make any noise.

“This is gonna be easier than I thought,” Buffy said hoping she wasn’t jinxing anything.

“It’s okay,” Dawn said. “We’re getting you off this thing.”

The third and final restraint slapped to the floor. Klaang, now free, suddenly erupted. He raised his arm, clubbed Dawn in the chest, and very easily blew the engineer across the room. She landed in a heap.

Buffy instinctively moved and with strength she had not used in a long time she wrestled Klaamg to the ground.

Klaang grew much more passive in the face of a stronger foe. He wisely yielded.

“I think he gets the idea,” Archer said. “Give him a hand.”

Buffy gave Klaang a supporting hand as Archer did the same for Dawn. They then followed Archer out the door.

“Qu’taw boh!” the Klingon roared, half dazed.

“yItamchoH!” Dawn ordered.

“Muh tok!”

A blast tore a chunk out of the wall. Suliban soldiers!

Dawn and Archer dove to the left, Buffy and Klaang to the right, for cover.

“Dajvo Tagh! Borat!”

“Give me the box,” Archer told Dawn who had been carrying a case with her.

Dawn slid the silver case’s strap off her shoulder and handed it to Archer. Just then, a Suliban attacker rushed into view from an adjoining corridor and caught them by surprise. As the Suliban took aim at Archer and Dawn, the Klingon suddenly rose like a grizzly bear.

The Suliban was caught under its chin and went flying into a bulkhead. Klaang followed him, caught him, and joyously pounded him unconscious.

A moment later he simply turned and came back to Archer, Buffy and Dawn, rumbling with satisfaction.

“qatlho',” Dawn said.

Another Suliban, and another after him, fired their weapons at them.

“Get to the ship!” Archer ordered. “Dawn and I’ll be right behind you!”

Buffy didn’t like the situation but knew that Dawn could handle herself and protect Archer. She grabbed Klaang and hauled him down the corridor.

Dawn and Archer crouched with the silver case. Archer removed a rectangular device and attached it with its own magnetics to the nearest wall, then activated it with the encoded authorization.

Then he dropped to his knees and covered his head, and hoped to live.

They huddled too near the magnetic damper, deafened somewhat by its whine. Only two seconds passed before the device emitted a blinding pulse of energy that radiated in all directions. They were blown over onto their sides. As the light receded, Archer and Dawn struggled to their feet. The corridor was trembling, shuddering! Thousands of magnetic docking ports unlocking—

The floor began to separate under their feet—the entire corridor was splitting in two! Force fields flashed on as the interlocking elements making up this section of the aggregate lost their cohesion. They were cut off.

Archer and Dawn had no choice but to turn and run in the other direction. The entire upper section of the Suliban aggregate was dismantling over their heads.

“John? Dawn?” Buffy’s voice called at them under the boom and clack of disengagement.

Dawn and Archer found a corner to duck behind. “It worked,” Archer said into his communicator without formality.

“Where are you?”

“We’re still in the central core,” Dawn said.

“Get Klaang back to Enterprise,” Archer added.

“I promise that I will come back for you both,” Buffy said. “Don’t know how I will find either of you but don’t worry I will. To make it easier stay as far away from the Suliban as you can.”

“Believe me,” Archer vowed with a glance at Dawn, “We’ll try.”

0 – 0 – 0 – 0 – 0

Inside the Suliban cell ship, Buffy sat beside Klaang, who spat and coughed protests about the accommodations.

“RaQpo jadICH!”

“I wish Dawn were hear,” Buffy said as she glanced at Klaang. “I don’t know a word your saying.”

“MajQa!”

Buffy kept sweeping for the Enterprise. “I don’t get it ... this is right where they’re supposed to be.” She adjusted the scanners, but found nothing.

It wasn’t. There was no one out there. Nothing.

0 – 0 – 0 – 0 – 0

“The charges are getting closer again,” Reed said as he looked over his console onboard the Enterprise.

“Another five kilometers, Ensign,” T’Pol ordered.

Mayweather worked the controls on the helm. “At this rate, the captain’ll never find us.”

“Wait a minute!” Hoshi interrupted. “I think I’ve got something!”

“Amplify it!” T’Pol ordered with endearing passion.

Hoshi tapped her controls. A cacophony of noises, radio signals, background noise, and distortion blasted through the bridge.

“It’s Commander Summers!”

“All I hear is noise,” Reed pointed out.

“Sshhh! Listen ... it’s just a narrow notch in the midrange ... she says she’s about to ignite her thruster exhaust!”

T’Pol moved quickly to her viewing hood and peered inside. “Coordinates—one fifty-eight mark ... one three.”

“Laid in!” Mayweather confirmed.

“Ahead, fifty kph.” She turned to Hoshi, and regarded the other woman with respect. “Shaya tonat.”

Hoshi offered a small smile. “You’re welcome.”

They all watched the sensors, though they could see very little on any screen that wasn’t the shifting of atmospheric chaos.

“Two kilometers, dead ahead,” Mayweather said, carefully maneuvering the ship to avoid a deadly collision—deadly for the Suliban pod that held their shipmates.

“Initiate docking procedures.” T’Pol authorized.

Hoshi turned to them, her face gray. “I’m only picking up two biosigns ... one Klingon ... one human.”

0 – 0 – 0 – 0 – 0

Dawn looked at Archer and could sense that he felt like a rabbit in a fox’s den.

“Stay calm,” she whispered. “Your nerves are coming over pretty well.”

“Sorry,” he whispered to her as he looked over his scanning device, which showed two Suliban moving away from a central indicator. They’d lost them.

But they were far from out of trouble. They squatted behind a metal beam more than eight feet off the deck.

When they were sure they could jump down safely, without being heard, they did.

Archer tapped the scanner and gave himself a wider view of the vicinity. Other blips showed still more Suliban, but there was a large area to one side with no life-signs at all.

Sanctuary.

He motioned to Dawn and she nodded as they hurried down the corridor.

When they found the passage to the empty area, the narrow passage at a single door. Archer hesitated and motioned to Dawn and then the door.

Dawn shrugged. She couldn’t sense anything from beyond the door. They moved cautiously to the door. She glanced over Archer’s shoulder at the scanner and saw it was now heavily distorted.

Why would it be? Could the distortion also be why Dawn couldn’t sense anything in the area beyond the door?

As they approached the door, it opened for them. They cautiously stepped through, inside was some kind of vestibule—a passage without an exit.

Dawn raised her arm—it stayed up after she put it down. ... Lights distorted their vision ... time began to slow ... to slow ... She realized they were in some kind of temporal alteration chamber.

Their arms and legs blurred as they moved. Gradually, deliberately, they learned to make forward progress, to ignore the echoes they saw. Archer moved his arms, and a second set made the same movement seconds later—or seconds before?

The sound of their footsteps preceded the actual steps. They stopped walking. Soon they had only two feet again. When they had a little control they clapped their hands.

The sound came before their hands met.

Now what?

Definitely time distortion, contained somehow. Moving with great deliberation, they began to explore the room, the alien architecture, the technology on undecipherable panels.

A podium rose before them. As it did, they were able to focus on it and noticed that the temporal distortions began to fade.

There was the podium, clear now before them, and a large weird-looking archway—metallic, huge, obviously purposeful in design and whatever its function was.

Dawn placed her hand on Archer’s chest as they turned sharply when a reverberation rang through the chamber—the door was opening. Beyond it, the dark vestibule appeared empty. The door closed and sealed again, as if a ghost had entered ... or left.

“You’re wasting your time. Klaang knows nothing.”

A voice!

Dawn watched as Archer tried to track the sound of someone’s footsteps with his pistol, ready to shoot.

“It would be unwise to discharge that weapon in this room,” the voice said. “Or use your gifts Millennial.”

“What is this room?” Archer asked. “What goes on here?”

“You’re very curious, Jonathan. May I call you Jonathan?”

“Am I supposed to be impressed that you know my name?” he asked reasonably.

“I’ve learned a great deal about you. About you, your newly assigned first officer, and the Millennial with you. Even more than you know.”

Archer glanced at Dawn and looked back towards the empty room. “Well, I guess you have us at a disadvantage,” he said, leading this person on. “So why don’t you drop the invisible man routine and let me see who I’m talking to?”

“You wouldn’t have come looking for Klaang,” the voice said, “if Sarin had told you what she knew. That means you’re no threat to me, Jonathan. But I do need you to leave this room.”

The time-door hissed again, and opened invitingly.

“Now, please.”

The footsteps echoed again, but this time Dawn and Archer saw something, a slight distortion against the far wall.

Instead of leaving, Dawn fired a blast of energy. A blurred preshot flowed in before the blast itself, and the sound had no attachment to what she saw. The beam struck the far wall. A jagged wave of energy blew from the point of impact and swept the room. Archer and Dawn were blown back, slamming their heads against a wall.

“I warned you not to use your gifts Millennial,” the voice said.

Again the distortion moved across the room.

“This chameleon thing ... pretty fancy,” Dawn said. “Was it payment for pitting the Klingons against each other? A trophy from your temporal cold war?”

An embittered action blew across the room, ultrafast, and slammed Dawn against the wall. Dawn could feel pure anger coming from the being. She looked up and saw the Suliban, now normalized against the background, its dappled face and skull still looking vaguely unreal. It held a weapon on Archer. As she stood with her eyes locked on those alien eyes, she recognized this as the leader of the attackers back at the spaceport on Rigel Ten.

“This is one of the Suliban that attacked us on Rigel Ten,” Dawn told Archer.

“I was going to let you go,” the Suliban said.

“Really?” Archer backed away slowly, trying to remember the timing of those echoes. “Then you obviously don’t know as much about us as you thought you did.”

“On the contrary,” the Suliban said, “I could’ve told you the day you were going to die, Jonathon. But I suppose that’s about to change as the Millennial watches. Can’t do much to her, she is after all immortal and will outlive even me.”

The Suliban opened fire on Archer, knocking first Archer’s weapon from his hand and then driving Archer backward.

Dawn fired a blsat of energy knocking the Suliban down completely.

“What’s the matter?” Archer chided. “No genetic tricks to keep you from getting knocked on your butt?”

“What you call tricks, we call progress!” the Suliban declared. “Are you aware that your genome is almost identical to that of an ape? The Suliban don’t share humanity’s patience with natural selection!”

“So, to speed things up a little, you struck a deal with the First,” Dawn said.

Archer glanced at Dawn and tapped his head.

Dawn didn’t need to be a telepath to know what Archer was thinking. They both moved so that they positioned themselves between the Suliban leader and the open time-lock.

Moving behind the consoles, Archer slowly removed the communicator from his belt. Carefully, he calculated the next trajectory of the temporal wave, then threw the communicator against a monitor on the far wall. The monitor sparked. The preecho effect made a dozen communicators sail through the air, drawing the Suliban’s attention. The Suliban, disoriented, aimed clumsily and fired at the sparking monitor.

The shock wave thundered outward from the strike zone. The Suliban tried to brace himself against it this time, and managed to stay on his feet. But Archer and Dawn had situated themselves in the perfect spot to be thrown into the open time-lock vestibule.

They tumbled like a snowball through the door. The door began to close.

At the last moment, the intelligent and obviously strong-willed Suliban plunged toward the door and slipped through. The temporal compression began as the door locked and sealed itself.

They were locked in this small place, a place where time was in convulsions, with a Suliban whose plans they had wrecked. The Suliban raised the weapon again. ...

Dawn moved and planted her hand on Archer’s chest and fired a blast of energy as it knocked the Suliban’s weapon from its hand.

Twisting viciously, Archer managed to pin the Suliban to the floor and lean on his opponent’s wrists in an attempt to keep the Suliban from tis weapon. It seemed to work, until the Suliban dislocated his own shoulder and wrist in a grotesque rotation and found a way to reach for the pistol, and got it. Archer punched the Suliban in the nose and the Suliban writhed and went momentarily limp. Archer shoved off him and he and Dawn bolted to the door and out.

Behind them, the Suliban had his weapon again and was coming out of the time-lock, aiming, firing—


	15. Qo'nos

“OUR MISSION is to return the Klingon to his homeworld. Another rescue attempt could jeopardize that mission—”

“Denied,” Buffy said irritated at T’Pol. “As first officer I am your superior officer, Sub-Commander. You would due well to remember that.”

A jolt from outside rocked the ship.

“The situation must be analyzed logically,” T’Pol said, but this time it sounded like she was trying to convince herself as much as Buffy. “We have work to do. We must stabilize our flight condition before we can move out of the atmosphere.”

“Again, denied,” Buffy said. “Sub-Commander man your station or get off the bridge.”

“Hull plating’s been repolarized,” Reed reported.

“Alright,” Buffy said as she glanced toward the Engineering console and it’s tie-in to Engineering. “Trip, what is your status?”

“The autosequencer’s on-line, but annular confinement’s still off by two microns,” Tucker said.

“That should suffice,” T’Pol said.

Buffy frowned as she turned on T’Pol. “In the ready room, now,” she ordered and marched into Archer’s ready room.

“Commander,” T’Pol said as she followed Buffy. “If the Suliban have reestablished their defense, we’ll have no other option.”

“I am not leaving my sister or John behind,” Buffy said. “I know you have seen mine and Dawn’s files. That means you know what I am capable of. Do not cross me on this. If it were you trapped over there I would do the exact same thing. I don’t leave people behind.”

“Bridge to Commander Summers, we have four more coming up off starboard!” Reed called over the intercom.

“Commander, as your first officer till Captain Archer returns. It is my duty to point out that a rescue attempt is ill advised,” T’Pol said. “We could lose this ship and our lives in the attempt.”

“Noted,” Buffy said. “And thank you, I appreciate your advice.” She turned and she and T’Pol exited the ready room. “Can we dock, Ensign?”

Mayweather blinked. “These aren’t ideal conditions—”

“Trip, I hate to do this to Dawn and John,” Buffy said. “The only way were going to get them back is with the transporter.”

“I’m on my way!” he declared.

0 – 0 – 0 – 0 – 0

In less than two minutes Tucker was in the newly installed transporter chamber, summoning power from deep in the bowels of the ship’s impulse drive system.

“I’ll do it,” he murmured. “I’ll do it, I can do it—”

The chamber began to whine a god-awful noise. He focused and focused, adjusted and hoped.

A column of light appeared inside the chamber, between the two pie plates on floor and ceiling that would act as a receiver. Human readings ... he was sure those were human readings. There was only two humans on that big Suliban knot out there!

Two humanoid shapes appeared, forming between the lights. But the Suliban were humanoid. Tucker held his breath.

There was nothing more he could do with the controls. They would either do what they were designed to do, or there would be a disaster here.

Archer and Dawn’s builds—their hair and hands—a crouched position. Running?

Long seconds finally pulled Dawn and Archer together out of a puzzle of lights and whines. They stumbled forward on sheer momentum, then skidded and stopped themselves, and looked around in shock at their new surroundings. They wavered, disoriented, then patted themselves to see if they were all there.

“Bridge!” Trip called. “We’ve got them!” He rushed to the pad platform. “Sorry, Captain! Commander! We had no other choice! Are either of you hurt? Are you both all here?”

“Well, I think so, most of me, anyway.” Archer offered him a tremulous smile.

“I’m good, thank you, Trip,” Dawn said.

“T’Pol wanted to leave you behind!” Tucker said. “But Buffy wouldn’t leave.”

0 – 0 – 0 – 0 – 0

The Planet Qo’noS

THE GNARLED TOWERS of the Klingon High Council chamber rose above a smoggy yellow haze in the capital city. Inside the chambers, an ancient room of stone and wooden beams was hung with ceremonial banners and echoes of conquests stemming back through the pages of alien time. Guards stood everywhere, more for show than function, dressed in regalia and armed with archaic weapons. The Council members, seated at a serpentine table, pounded and shouted in their idea of debate.

In a noble queue, Archer, Buffy, Dawn, T’Pol, and Hoshi moved into the enormous chamber, led by Klaang, who was so calm now as to be arguably majestic.

Klaang was clearly working at both strength and dignity, despite what he had suffered physically. He stopped before the Chancellor. “Wo’migh Qagh! Q’apla!”

“He’s disgraced the empire,” Dawn translated. “He’s ready to die.”

Archer murmured, “That’s all we get out of this?”

The Chancellor was on his feet now, glaring in open curiosity at the humans. The wide-shouldered leader walked down the great stone steps, and as he did this, he drew a jagged dagger from its sheath.

Klaang tensed but never flinched as the Chancellor stopped in front of him.

The Chancellor snatched Klaang’s wrist and drew the blade across the palm, drawing blood.

Archer winced and put his hand out slightly to his side to keep Hoshi steady.

T’Pol, Buffy and Dawn remained unfazed. The latter two because of their years in Sunnydale.

“Poq!” the Chancellor called.

An aide approached with a vial, held it up, and caught several drops of Klaang’s blood, while Klaang stood there, completely dumbfounded by all this.

The aide hurried to a large apparatus that remained undefined until he opened it and inserted the vial into a sensor padd. A large screen came to life suddenly, displaying a highly magnified cluster of lavender blood cells.

The Council members grumbled with sounds that might have been approval.

The image continued to enlarge, and became spirals of DNA. The spirals became larger and larger, until a distinctive pattern showed itself even to the untrained eye. The aide kept working the controls until individual molecules rose before the audience.

Hoshi drew a breath to speak, but Archer motioned her silent.

The molecular pattern began to rotate, revealing ... what were those? Maps!

Maps, and text! Alien script written on a molecular level!

“Phlox should see this,” Archer murmured. “He’d have a kitten.”

Text, schedules, coordinates ...

The entire chamber erupted in a rumble of approval. Then the Chancellor, purple-faced with excitement, stalked over to Archer.

He lifted the dagger to Archer’s throat. Archer remained steady, but it took some doing.

“ChugDah hegh ... volcha vay.”

Just like that, the Chancellor lowered the weapon and stalked away.

Archer let himself breathe again. “I’ll take that as a thank you. ...”

“No it wasn’t,” Dawn replied. “And you don’t want to know what he said, believe me.”

The Klingon chamber began to shuffle with activity as the meeting broke up and the Council adored its DNA treasure. Now they could move on with whatever internal conflicts they had with their neighbors, the Suliban, or they could use the contraband information to get the Suliban to leave them alone. At least they knew now that their internal structure was being tampered with. They wouldn’t turn against each other now. At least, not for a while.

Archer turned and motioned his crew toward the door. “Ladies? Allow me to escort you to a much better place. We’ve done all we can here. Anybody got a silver bullet?”

0 – 0 – 0 – 0 – 0

Acher stood up as the door chime on his ready room jingled. “Come in.”

T’Pol and Buffy came in, oddly side by side and not even spitting. What had gone on here while he was incommunicado?

“I’ve just gotten a response to the message I sent to Admiral Forrest,” he told them. “He enjoyed telling the Vulcan High Command about the Suliban we ran into. It’s not every day he gets to be the one dispensing information.”

T’Pol looked quizzical, but she got the inference.

“I wanted you both to hear Starfleet’s new orders before I inform the crew.”

“Orders?” Buffy asked.

Archer nodded and looked at T’Pol. “Your people are sending a transport to pick you up.”

T’Pol seemed hesitant, but buried it. “I was under the impression that Enterprise would be taking me back to Earth.”

“It would be a little out of our way. Admiral Forrest sees no reason why we shouldn’t keep going.”

Buffy smiled. “Good.”

Archer smiled and agreed, “I have a feeling Dr. Phlox won’t mind staying around for a while. He’s developing a fondness for the human endocrine system.”

“I’ll have Trip get double watches on the repair work!”

“I think the outer hull’s going to need a little patching up,” Archer said. “Let’s hope that’s the last time somebody takes a shot at us.”

“Let’s hope!” Buffy agreed. She spun on a heel and headed for the door. T’Pol started to follow her, but Archer stopped them.

“A moment please,” he asked.

“Ever since I can remember,” he began, “I’ve seen Vulcans as an obstacle, always keeping us from standing on our own two feet.”

“I think I can speak for T’Pol when I say we both understand,” Buffy said as T’Pol nodded in agreement.

“No, I don’t think T’Pol does, though you might, Buffy. If we’re going to pull this off, there are a few things we have to leave behind. Things like preconceptions ... holding grudges ...” He paused, and tilted his head to soften his meaning. “This mission would’ve failed without your help, T’Pol.”

“I won’t dispute that,” T’Pol said.

“I was thinking a Vulcan science officer could come in handy ... but if I ask you to stay, it might look like we weren’t ready to do this on our own.”

T’Pol raised her chin in that way she had. “Perhaps you should add pride to your list.”

“Perhaps I should.”

T’Pol considered the honesty, then said, “It might be best if I were to contact my superiors and make the request myself. With your permission,” she added decorously.

Archer smiled again. “Permission granted.”

“I would also like to suggest,” Buffy said. “That T’Pol be made second in command.”

“I think that can be arranged,” Archer agreed.

They stood together in companionable unity for a few moments as the ship streaked along at its new high-warp cruising speed.

“Will you both join me on the bridge?” he asked, and gestured toward the door. “We have some good news for the crew, don’t we?”

“Captain,” T’Pol said with a lilt, “I will be honored to assist.”

“What she said,” Buffy said with a smile.

The other crew members were at their stations as they came out of the ready room. They might have suspected something was going on, but they seemed to be assuming the worst. Reed was straight as a stick. Mayweather was leaning forward on his helm controls, almost sagging. Both Dawn and Hoshi’s eyebrows were up in anticipation. Tucker’s absence bothered Archer a little, but he knew the engineer was larking about below decks, doing what he liked to do.

Archer came to a place on the bridge where he could see them all, and they could all see him. T’Pol and Buffy politely moved a little off to one side and let him have the stage.

“I hope nobody’s in a big hurry to get home,” he began. “Starfleet seems to think we’re ready to begin our mission. Mr. Reed, I understand there is an inhabited planet a few light-years from here?”

“Sensors show a nitrogen-sulfide atmosphere,” Reed said, not exactly confirming or dismissing what Archer had just said.

“Probably not humanoids,” Hoshi clarified.

“That’s what we’re here to find out,” Archer reminded. “Travis, prepare to break orbit and lay in a course.”

Mayweather looked up at him, beaming. “I’m reading an ion storm on that trajectory, sir ... should I go around it?”

Archer glanced at Buffy and smiled before returning his attention to Mayweather. “We can’t be afraid of the wind, Ensign,” he said. “Take us to warp four.”


	16. Interlude - April

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another jump this time about 95 years.

**_2245_ **

Buffy and Dawn sat in the orbital lounge looking out over a new Enterprise that was about ready to be launched. It had been nearly one hundred years since they had set out on John’s Enterprise and they had enjoyed every bit of it.

They had been through quite a bit during the NX-01’s mission; the temporal cold war, the Xindi threat and finally simple exploration. Finally they had joined John at the ceremony that had brought together the Vulcans, the Andorians, Humans and the Tellarites to found the United Federation of Planets that would one day encompass all those planets that Jean Luc had said belonged to the Federation of his time period.

And the first of their friends from the NX-01 had died; Trip had died saving his friends Buffy and John by luring an enemy boarding party into a nearby plasma junction which he rigged to explode. He was mortally injured during the explosion and his final words were to Buffy, he told her not to let Dawn get away. That she might be Buffy’s sister or cousin, depending on what story they told. But he had seen the budding relationship between them and knew it would blossom into much more over time.

And now they sat there contemplating everything that had happened as they smiled and watched as the newest Enterprise left drydock. And they nodded, finally it they were heading for the future that they had heard about all those years ago as they watched the USS Enterprise, NCC-1701 under the command of Robert April head off into that future.


End file.
